Murder Without Tears. Leonard Lupton
She started to turn away. She said musingly, “I wanted to see where you lived. I hoped that it would tell me something about you. But it looks like a hotel room.”
I said, “What else? This is a public house, not a home.”
She swung a quick glance along the hall. “Shall we go down now?”
I put both hands on her shoulders. I turned her toward me, moving her so that her face was level with mine. But she put both hands against my chest, pushing.
“Not now,” she said. “Not right here—not right now. These things can’t be forced, not with me, at any rate.”
I looked at her steadily, aware of a sincerity and a half-promise that were more important and more enticing than any other promise had been before.
I said, “Of course,” and took my hands from her shoulders and touched her elbow, but only to guide her toward the stairs. I had waited before. I had waited through the war years and through most of the years since and now I had twisted life around a little, this past year or so, to fit a pattern I had long had in mind. The whole thing, the waiting, the planning, could have been upset in a matter of seconds here on the lonely third floor of River House.
She paused at the top of the stairs and looked at me. There was a skylight overhead and I could see the blue of her eyes and the question behind them—a question she seemed to be asking of herself, not me.
She smiled suddenly and said, “You’re a patient man, Jason. I’m afraid of patient men. They don’t often lose any game they play.”
I said, “Then this is only a game?”
The smile went away. “No,” she said slowly. “This isn’t just a game any more. I thought you understood that.” She turned quickly and started down the stairs.
When I had seen her out the front door to her car I asked, “Anne, if it isn’t a game any more, will I see you tonight?”
She did not hesitate. “Of course,” she said. “I’ll come unescorted and you’ll have to sit with me.”
But I did not sit with her in the barroom of River House that night. I sat with a Major Craddock instead.
You might have been in the late great war and still have been lucky enough never to have met Major Craddock. He was not a combat soldier, nor yet stateside. He was—or had been—an MP officer. He had always operated in base section. Operated is the right word.
He came into the barroom at River House that Saturday night with his gut sucked in and his chest out and his shoulders very square. He had a crew cut and a big, blueish jaw. He kept his eyes squinted into dangerous slits, so there would be no doubt that, although here was a gentleman and upon occasion a very polished one, here, too, was a very hard case.
He came straight to the table where I sat waiting for Anne Cramer, and said, “You’re Broome.”
I put an inch of cigar ash into the black tray that had RIVER HOUSE printed on it in white letters. I leaned back in the caned chair and looked up at him.
I remembered this man, all right. One of his MP’s had arrested me in a base section town for wearing a mixed uniform, minus a tie. I hadn’t had much trouble proving why I was dressed that way. A phone call to a code number had fixed that. But the memory nudged me now and some of the old annoyance scratched across my palate. It made my voice raspy.
I said, “I’m Broome.”
He sat down. He said, “Do you know who I am?”
I said, “No.”
He said, “I am Major Craddock.” His voice got a little smug. “I am General Gunther Cramer’s right hand man.”
I thought to myself, You are just one shade removed from being General Gunther Cramer’s dog-robber . . . but I did not say that. I said, “How do you do, Major Craddock. I hope you are enjoying your stay in Newburyport.”
He took out and lit a cigarette after frowning at my cigar. He went through all that silly business of tapping it and lighting it with great care.
He said, “Broome, I’m going to be blunt with you. It has come to the general’s attention that his daughter has been seen in this place.”
“Anything unusual about that?” I asked as casually as I could.
“No.” He made a gesture with the manicured hand that held the king-size cigarette. “But the general doesn’t like it. A little slumming is all right when it’s done in a group, but not alone. I understand Miss Cramer has been here unescorted.”
I felt the slow burn starting but I don’t think it showed. I inhaled cigar smoke. It was heavy, rich and quieted my first angry impulses. I managed to say quietly enough, “My compliments to the general on the work of his intelligence agents. I hadn’t thought of River House as a slum area.”
The major thought that one over, changing color slightly. I got the feeling of an imminent explosion. When I looked down at his hands, all I could see were knuckles.
He said, “Look, Broome. Maybe I’d better use your own language. You’ve been putting up a big front here, but I know your background. I’ve looked you up. Do you begin to understand?”
I said, “No. I wear a clean shirt and don’t swear in front of ladies. Doesn’t that make me a gentleman?”
“All right—crack wise. I’ve met a lot of men like you in my career. They’re as brittle as their pretensions.”
I said, “You’re making me some kind of threat and I don’t understand why.”
I understood why all right, but I needed time. I needed to stall him. We were going to have it out—that was why he was here. The general probably said, “Craddock, my daughter is getting interested in a bum from the brickyards who runs some kind of a saloon out on Brickyard Avenue. Go take care of this bum.”
The idea burned me, but under the burn it amused me a little, too. I wondered if the major still saluted the general. They were both out of the army but I would have bet they kept observing all the regulations.
“I’m not threatening you, Broome. I’m explaining a delicate situation. You are to discourage Anne’s coming here. The general won’t have it. Is that clear?”
I said, “You express yourself well, Major. If I don’t give Anne Cramer the cold shoulder hereafter—I’m in serious trouble?”
He leaned back, relaxed. I could see the beginning of contempt and amusement in his eyes.
“I’m glad you realize that, Broome. I thought we would meet on common ground. I understand you had some sort of military experience yourself. You know how these things are.”
I knew how they were. The army expected the corporal to be a better man than the private; and the majors and the bird-boys stood up in the officer’s mess when the man with the star on his collar came in late. There was a reason for it, and a good one. A chain of command, unquestioning obedience, so automatic that it became a natural way of life in wartime.
But this was not war—not yet—and I didn’t stand up any more in the presence of field grade or better. I was a citizen of a free and democratic country and it was now my privilege to tell Major Craddock where to go.
I leaned across the table, even as he was relaxing, and told him just that. “Major Craddock, you can go to hell.”
It might have been kinder to have hit him in the stomach. The result could have been no more startling. Craddock’s neck began to swell and the fine, oxford collar cut into it and left a thin line of white, bloodless flesh in the midst of all that red flush of anger.
He got up at once, as I had expected he would, and the MP in him made his hand reach out automatically to take hold of my shirt front. I knew the next move. He would drag me up close and belt me across the mouth with the back