Dead, She Was Beautiful Page 17

  Slowly, Hagen began backing away. He did it inch by inch so that his voice wouldn’t fade abruptly as he talked. Now that he had located Dagne, he wanted to draw her into the brush. He didn’t dare charge her where she stood in the open road. He still clutched the arrow in his left hand. He said, “The note you left me tonight was the big give-away. Your handwriting told me that you were the archer.”

  “You came, didn’t you?” she argued back at him. “I counted on your affections, Hagen, not your perception. Don’t worry, I’ll remember to take the billet-doux off your body before I go.”

  That gave him an uncomfortable moment. She did know him pretty well to realize that he had stuck her decoy message in his pocket. Was he manœuvring now exactly as she expected him to? He couldn’t believe that. The smiling brunette beauty shadowed in the roadway was only a murderess, not a sorceress.

  “What about my body?”

  “What about it? I suppose it’ll be found someday.”

  “And my car?”

  “It’s a big ocean. Meanwhile, the police will hunt you all the way across the country and I’ll gradually be forgotten. You’ve been very close to me, Hagen, darling, but you were getting too close.” She giggled. “The bargain is this. I’m going to forget you and you’re certainly not going to think about me.”

  “Did you forget Bruce that easy? I can see why he jilted you, Dagne. You didn’t have to skewer him because he abandoned you. You could have scared him to death.”

  “That isn’t funny!”

  “I think it is. It must be hard pretending to be a human being. Quite a song and dance you gave me about how much you and Hilda loved each other. You hated Hilda and she undoubtedly despised you. Why would you two have made such a production about splitting up and trying to destroy the resemblance if you were so damned fond of each other?”

  Dagne’s eyes were narrow and her mouth tight. She drew forth another arrow and didn’t reply.

  Hagen said hastily, “The arrow was the first tip-off. You told me that you and Hilda had to take all the same courses in school. And Hilda had learned archery in college. You should have used another weapon on Hilda but I guess you couldn’t break out of the pattern you’d started with Bruce Shanner.”

  Dagne adjusted her leather wristguard sullenly. “I do as I please. I have no patterns. When Hilda learned about the Bruce business, I simply thought that archery was appropriate.” She strung the arrow.

  “Your note tonight gave me the whole picture. The Beldorian stuff you carefully copied out on a typewriter at work. But your note had to look like a last minute thing. Hence, you were finally forced to give me a handwriting sample. And the sample showed how similar your penmanship was to your twin sister’s. That’s what fooled everyone about the diary. Since it was found in Hilda’s room and the writing looked like hers, naturally, it must be her diary. But it wasn’t. She stole it from you, didn’t she? That was why you killed her.”

  “Of course. Hilda had the eye of a magpie. Anything that glistened or glittered she made off with. I suppose the pretty binding caught her fancy. I shouldn’t have let her out of my apartment without searching her.”

  “Then you have a whole set of diaries? One for every year. That explains why it began so neatly in January and ended in December.”

  “I like to preserve my thoughts,” said Dagne.

  I wish I knew them now, baby, pondered Hagen. In his gradual withdrawal, his foot reached out into space. He had come to the edge of the canyon. The moonlight showed him a steep slope of loose shale vanishing down into shadow. He considered slipping over the edge but decided his descent would be too noisy. In a moment Dagne could reach the canyon brim and shoot down on him at will. He crawled to his right, tracing the tortuous lip of the gulch.

  Apparently, he decided, Hilda hadn’t feared her sister even after stealing the incriminating diary and reading about the Hawaiian murder. Hilda had been waiting for Dagne to call Tuesday night. The manhattans, the second glass hadn’t been for Hagen at all. Well, Dagne had called. And here he grovelled, trying to make up for that night.

  “Hilda was blackmailing you, wasn’t she?” he said. “She had to die because she had your handwritten confession that you killed Shanner.”

  “Oh, you never saw her happier than when she finally had something to hold over my head. She wouldn’t give me the diary back and I had no way of knowing where it was or searching her house.”

  “But you two women always thought alike. If she was blackmailing you, then you must have been doing the same thing to her for years, or ever since she married money. You knew about her kleptomania. I’ll bet Hilda’s sickness paid for that overdecorated salon of yours.”

  “You should talk about taste! You married her once.”

  “And I fell in love with you, sweetheart,” called Hagen sardonically. That won him an arrow. It whirred by him and lost itself in the depths of the canyon. But Dagne didn’t come after him immediately although she got ready another shaft.

  Hagen said, “Well, the joke was that Hilda couldn’t return your diary. Mrs. Rosemary Wishart had swiped it from her. Of course, by that time, you’d figured out that if Hilda died, the diary didn’t matter. It’d be found among her possessions and, because of the similar handwriting, assumed to be hers. Her unknown year in prison matched the diary’s murder year.”

  “It worked, didn’t it?”

  “It’s not working now. You manœuvred me into Hilda’s death scene as the prime suspect, but that didn’t work because the police didn’t hold me. You figured that an ex-husband would take the pressure off you, as her nearest relative, but you couldn’t hire me personally because I’d recognize you as Hilda’s twin. So that’s how poor Doc got dragged into the act, as your go-between. Why, you’ve been ready to break through the ice every minute since Hilda died. The day I took you down to Fathom Street, you were nearly recognized twice as the woman who had hired Doc. The bartender and the doorman at the burlesque theatre both thought you looked familiar.”

  “But that could be blamed on Hilda’s picture in the paper. Clever of you to give me alibis.”

  “And you nearly broke through the ice with Jack Ferreira. He didn’t see the killing but he saw you leave by the back gate and thought you were Hilda, who he was supposed to follow around. So he followed you to your apartment. Obviously, his confusion was cleared by the morning papers.”

  Dagne asked, “Am I supposed to feel sorry for him too?”

  “That’s up to you. I’m just glad I wasn’t you the day you discovered you’d killed one blackmailer only to pick up another. I don’t miss Jack but I am curious. Did you kiss him before you slipped him the mickey?”

  She chuckled. “Suppose you just worry about that, darling.”

  “I won’t. Funny thing about us suckers. Everything we feel for a woman drains out the hole when we get shot in the back. You’ve had quite a collection lately, me and Jack and Larry Beldorian. I suppose he’s in love with you. He probably followed you over here from the Islands just to lick your boots. It’s smart of you, Dagne, always to keep at least one more patsy up your sleeve. Have you set a date for his funeral yet?”

  “You’re a strange and clever lad,” she informed him. “If you knew so much truth, why did you come out here tonight?”

  “Yeah,” he muttered but didn’t tell her any more. Why did I? he wondered. His back ached stiffly and his head was spinning from loss of blood. He keenly felt his humiliation, hiding in the bushes from a woman. Why did I come? I’ve got the answer here somewhere but I’m afraid to look at it. I came because I thought I could save her. I came hoping she could prove to me that killing Hilda and Jack and Bruce Shanner were the right and honourable things to do. That’s the kind of damned fool a woman can make of you when you love her. I wanted her to make me proud of her worst sins, show me plainly that she was worth loving. And if she’d shown me anything but her cheap tinsel for guts, I’d have broken the law for her and sold my soul. Well, I’ve failed. I’ve
failed again. Take a good look at your idealism, Hagen, throw that broken sword away and don’t buy another one. Dreams are harder than diamonds and you’ll always break your toy swords on them, right up to the day that you break yourself. You failed with Hilda and you’ve failed with Dagne. You better try another brand of hope.

  He rubbed away the fever-heat that was reddening his eyesight. His hand shook so that the arrow sweating in it rattled noisily against the dry packed earth.

  “Hagen!” called Dagne. “Have you fainted? If you’re in pain, tell me, darling. There’s no need for you to suffer.”

  At the sound of her disdainful voice, his strength came back. He said distinctly, “I’m not going to suffer. You want to know why I came tonight? Simply to apologize for lying to you last night. I had no business taking advantage of you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “About your emotions, your glands. It wasn’t fair of me to get you worked up like that when all I wanted was a place to sleep. I was awful tired.”

  “Do you realize what you’re saying?”

  “I’m sorry if the truth hurts. I always have been an opportunist, Dagne, and your bed looked mighty comfortable. Oh, I’ve no doubt you’re a very desirable woman, under the right circumstances—and with the right man.” Hagen chuckled. “Forgive me? I was exhausted, and you should never believe a man who wants nothing more than a place to flop.”

  He did know one thing about women. They can be called anything but undesirable.

  “You dirty liar!” yelled Dagne. “You wanted me!” She loosed the arrow at where his voice had been. “And now you’re going to have me!” Drawing another shaft from her quiver, she came off the moonlit road.

  He lost sight of her in the brush but occasionally he could hear the slinking tread of her shoe as she nudged a dry leaf or passed through the whispering meadow grass. He huddled in the blackest shadow he could find, a wind-bowed scrub-oak. A helpful cloud dulled the moon for a minute, two minutes….

  When he saw Dagne again, she was poised on the edge of the canyon, searching the depths below. Her bowstring was drawn tight and the arrow point roamed back and forth, ready for the slightest movement.

  “Hagen?” she inquired softly. “Hagen, darling, you were lying, weren’t you?”

  Gradually, with aching slowness, he raised his left hand with the arrow in it. He tried hard to remember how he had thrown the arrows at the target by the Wishart pool. One of them had stuck. But that had been with his other hand, his good hand.

  Dagne was the same distance away, ten yards. The moon came out in treacherous splendour. Dagne turned and saw him.

  Hagen threw the arrow with all his might. It didn’t come within a yard of her.

  But her eyes widened in horror as she saw one of her own feathered sticks sailing through the air toward her. She danced out of the way, the wrong way. Some of the shale skipped out from under her shoe. For a frenzied instant, she fought for her balance and lost it. Her impatient bow fired its missile straight up and, with a scream, Dagne plunged into the empty darkness. In the fraction of time that she hung poised before vanishing, she looked like a diver springing from the board. Then she was gone into the pool of blackness.

  Hagen was left crouched for a charge, his one usable arm outstretched. He had intended to distract her aim and take his chances on rushing her. But there was nothing left to grapple with. There were only the sounds, the echo of her first scream, the rocky scraping noise when she hit, and her second liquid scream that was ended quickly.

  He waited in the silence. Presently, he groped in his pockets for a book of matches and eased himself down the slope to find her.

  Dagne lay at the bottom of a steep arroyo. Remains of scrap lumber and tin from the construction of the Oakmar billboards had been dumped here. She was on top of the heap. It would have been more poetical if one of her own arrows had pierced her heart, but it was only a cast-off piece of lath, splintered to a point, that had bayoneted her stomach.

  She was awkwardly sprawled face-down on the trash pile. Hagen, holding a match flare aloft, started to turn her over to a more restful position. He changed his mind. Dagne’s face had scraped over a piece of tin. She was unrecognizable. She didn’t look as if she’d ever had a face.

  Hagen let his match burn out and didn’t light another. He thought he ought to say something. He muttered finally, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for all of us.” He could remember Hilda. Relaxing in death, she had finally achieved true beauty. But what had Dagne achieved? He shook his head, trying to forget. At least, she no longer resembled her sister. Dead, she was nobody.

  He climbed up to the mesa again and went to his car. It was difficult to drive with only his left arm but he managed to reach the stucco medieval castle in the heart of the tract. The door was padlocked on a chain and wouldn’t give way. Hagen kicked in a window and climbed through to the telephone.

  His first call was to Troge.

  By the time he finally heard the sirens whining in the distance, Hagen had smoked several cigarettes in the dark and thought a lot of thoughts. His shoulder ached miserably but it would heal. It was the rest of him that he wondered about.

  His second call was to the recruiting office. The staff there was working late just as he was. The sergeant who answered the phone thought Hagen was kidding about reactivating his commission. And he had never heard of Die-Hard Rock. The sergeant said, “What rock are you talking about? Go on back to the party, pal, you don’t know when you’re well off. And see if she’s got a sister for me, will you?”

  “That’s the trouble,” said Hagen. “She did have.”

  He hung up. He could explain tomorrow. For now, he took the sergeant’s advice. He climbed out through the broken window and went back to his party. The first guests were just arriving in a squad car.

  THE END

  This edition published by

  Prologue Books

  an imprint of F+W Media, Inc.

  10151 Carver Road

  Cincinnati, Ohio 45236

  www.fwcrime.com

  Copyright © 1955 by Whit Masterson, Registration Renewed 1983

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction.

  Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

  eISBN 10: 1-4405-4064-0

  eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4064-6