Chapter 14 Chapter 14 The Transformed Chrysler

We climbed the path again and walked back to the Collinsons' mansion.I showed Rowley bloodstained towels, handkerchiefs, dresses, slippers; white paper wrapped in morphine; the gun on the floor of Collinson's bedroom, the bullet holes in the ceiling, and the empty cartridge casings on the floor. "There's still a case under the chair," I said, "but I saw one in the corner before, very close to the pistol." "You mean it was taken after you left?" "That's right." "But what good would that do anyone?" "I can't think of it either, but it was taken."

He has lost interest and is staring at the ceiling.Then he said, "Two shots were fired, but only one bullet hole. I guess the other one went out the window." He went back to Gabrielle Collinson's bedroom and examined the black silk dress.It was torn in a few places - near the hem of the skirt - but there were no bullet holes.He put the dress back and picked up the paper containing the morphine on the dressing table. "Why do you think this thing is here?" he asked. "She took drugs. It was one of the few things her stepmother taught her." "Tut, tut, tut. It really looks like she did it."

"what?" "You also know that she is addicted to drugs, right? They had a conflict, he brought you here, and as a result—" He paused, pouted his lips, and then asked, "When do you think he was killed ?” "I don't know. Maybe he was on his way home after waiting for me last night." "Were you at the hotel all night?" "From eleven o'clock to five o'clock this morning. Of course, I might find time to kill someone during that time." "I don't mean that," he said. "Just asking. What does this Mrs. Collinson-Carter look like? I haven't seen it."

"She was about twenty years of age, five feet four or five inches tall, and looked more slender than she was; short, light-brown curly hair, large eyes, sometimes brown, sometimes green; fair skin, with a narrow forehead; The lips and teeth are very small, the chin is very raised, the ears are pointed, and there are no earlobes; he has been ill for several months, and his complexion is not good." "It shouldn't be hard to find," he said, and began rummaging through drawers, wardrobes, and trunks.I looked through it the first time I got back, and couldn't find anything interesting.

"It looks like she didn't pack or take anything," he concluded, returning to the dresser where I stood.He stretched out a thick finger, pointing to the silver cosmetic box on the table: "What is the abbreviation of GDL on it?" "Her maiden name was Gabrielle Leggett, and a middle name." "Oh, yes. Then she drove away, huh?" "Did they ever drive here?" I asked. "Usually when he gets into town, he either walks or drives a Chrysler convertible. If she wants to drive, she'll have to take Strand. Let's go up there and see."

After leaving the house, he circled the house a few times while I waited beside him.He found nothing.Later, he stopped at a place that was obviously a carport, pointed to the track on the ground and said to me: "It was driven out this morning." I tentatively believed him. We followed a dusty road up another gravel road, and walked about a mile to a gray house standing among a group of red farmhouses.A lean, high-shouldered man with a slight limp was oiling the water pump behind the house.Rowley called him Debro. "Yes, Ben," he answered Rowley's question, "she was passing here at seven o'clock this morning, panicked like an ant on a hot pot. There was no one else in the car."

"What is she wearing?" I asked. "Brown coat and no hat." I asked him if he knew the Carters well, since he lived closest to them.He knows nothing about them.He had talked to Carter two or three times, and he found the young man to be quite easygoing.Once he took his wife to see Mrs. Carter, but Carter said she was not feeling well and rested in bed.The DeBrow couple only looked at her from a distance, and she was always with her husband whether she was walking or riding. "I don't think anyone around here has ever talked to her," he said excitedly, "except Mary Nunes, of course."

"Mary works for them?" asked the deputy. "Well. What, Ben, is there something going on in there?" "The husband fell off the cliff last night, but the wife ran away without a sound." Debro whistled. Rowley went into the house and borrowed Debro's phone to report to the sheriff.I stayed outside and tried to get some more information from Debro—even if it was his personal opinion.But all I heard was a bunch of exclamations. "Let's go find Mary," said the deputy sheriff after calling.So we left Debro, crossed the road, and made our way across fields toward a clump of trees. "Strange, she's not there."

"Who is she?" "A Mexican who lives in the lowlands over there with her countrymen. Her husband, Pedro Nuñez, is serving a life sentence in Fukuyama right now—he killed a dun in a robbery two or three years ago. Bootleggers." "A local case?" "Yeah. Right on the bay in front of the Tucker Hotel." We walked through the trees to a stream where half a dozen cabins had been built—in shape, size, and red lead construction like wagon cars.There are several vegetable gardens scattered behind the house.In front of one of the cabins sat a disfigured Mexican woman.Wearing a pink plaid dress, she was sitting on an empty soup can, with a cornstalk pipe in her mouth, and a dark-skinned baby in her arms.A few scruffy children were playing in the space between the rooms, and a few equally scruffy mongrels were clamoring for it.A brown-skinned man in a coverall with a bluish background was standing in the garden, hoeing every now and then.

The children stopped playing and watched Rowley and I come stepping over the rocks in the creek.The dogs came roaring and barking around us until a little boy shooed them away.We stopped in front of a woman with a baby.The deputy police chief grinned at the baby: "Heh, this brat is getting stronger as he grows!" The woman drew out her pipe and let out a complaint: "He always has a hernia." "Tut, tut, tut. Where's Mary Nunes?" The pipe pointed to the next cabin. "I thought she was doing odd jobs at the Tuke Hotel," he said. "Sometimes," the woman replied nonchalantly.

We went to the next hut.An old lady in a gray robe came to the door and looked at us as she stirred something in a large yellow bowl. "Where's Mary?" asked the deputy. She turned her head, called into the room a few times, then moved aside to let another woman come to the door.The woman was short and stocky, in her early thirties, with a broad, flat face and dark, shrewd eyes.She had a dark blanket tied around her throat.The blanket hangs down to the floor. "How do you do, Mary," said Rowley, "why didn't you go to Carter's?" "I'm ill, Mr. Rowley." She had no accent. "The wind chill—can't go out today." "Tut, tut, tut, this is bad. Have you seen a doctor?" She replied no.Rowley said she should go and see, she said she didn't need to, she had a lot of colds.Rowley was right, but it was more time to see a doctor, and it was better to prevent problems before they happened.She agreed, but said that seeing a doctor is too expensive, and getting sick is not a good thing, and it would be even worse if you have to spend money.Luo Li said that in the long run, it is more cost-effective to go to medical treatment.When I began to think that this conversation might last a day, Rowley finally turned the conversation to the Carters and asked about the maids. She told us she had been hired two weeks earlier when they rented out the hotel.She came by nine every morning—they never got up before ten—helped them with the cooking, did the housework, and left in the evening after washing the dishes, usually around seven-thirty.She seemed surprised to hear that Collinson--to her the man named Carter--had been killed and his wife had run away.She also told us that after dinner the night before, Collinson had gone out by himself, saying he wanted to go for a walk.It was around six-thirty—dinner had been brought forward, for no particular reason mentioned.It was just after seven o'clock when she came home, and Mrs. Carter was reading in the first-floor vestibule. Mary Nunes didn't—or probably didn't want to—tell us the reasons that would allow me to deduce why Collinson had come to me for help.All she knew, she insisted, was that Mrs. Carter looked unhappy—and she was.Mary has her own set of speculations about this: Mrs. Carter has another lover, but her parents force her to marry Carter; so, of course, Carter was killed by the third person, and Mrs. Carter eloped with him.With no other evidence from her than a woman's intuition, I asked her about the Carters' visitors. She said she had never seen anyone. Rowley asked her again if the Carters had ever quarreled.She said "no" at first, but quickly backtracked, adding that they fought a lot and the conversation was never pleasant.Mrs. Carter didn't like her husband coming near her, and Mary had heard her tell her several times that she would kill him if he didn't stay far away.I tried to induce Mary to go into more detail, asking her how the threats had been made and how the words had been said, but she would not.She told us that she only remembered Mrs. Carter threatening Mr. Carter with death and telling him to leave. "That makes sense," Rowley said contentedly, as we walked across the creek and up the slope to the Debro's house. "What makes sense?" "His wife killed him." "You think so?" "You don't either." "No." I said. Rowley stopped and looked at me with some concern. "How can you still say that now?" he protested. "Isn't she a drug addict? Didn't you say it yourself, she was always groggy? Didn't she run away? Didn't she leave everything behind?" Is it bloody? Didn't she threaten to kill her husband so that he invited you here?" "What Mary heard wasn't a threat," I said, "it was a warning—about a curse. Gabrielle Collinson really believed that. She was thinking about him, trying to save his life. I've taught her before." That thing. She wouldn't have married him if Collinson hadn't dragged her away when she was out of her wits and didn't know what she was doing. And it frightened her more." "But who would believe—" "I don't want anyone to believe anything," I growled, and walked on again, "I'm telling you what I believe. Now that I've said it all, I dare say it, Marie Nugne She must have been lying when she said she hadn't been to the house this morning. She probably had nothing to do with Collinson's death; Kicked the shell casings off the floor and ran home and made up a lie about having a cold just to be safe - she'd had enough of that trouble when her husband was locked in. But maybe not That's what it is. Anyway, a woman like her in that situation would do it nine times out of ten. It would take a little more evidence to convince me that she just happened to have a cold this morning." "Well," said the deputy, "if she has nothing to do with the murder, what difference does it make if she has a cold or not?" The several responses I thought of were both blasphemy and insulting, so I refrained from saying anything.
Back at DeBro's, we borrowed a station wagon that was made up of at least three old cars and rattled down East Street to see if we could track down the Chrysler. girl.We stopped first at Claude Baker's.This person has a pale complexion, a thin body, and a sharp-edged face. It looks like he hasn't shaved for three or four days.His wife was probably younger than he was, but she looked older—tired and faded, but perhaps once beautiful.They have six children.The oldest was ten, bow-legged, and freckled; the youngest, not yet a year old, was chubby and rowdy.The other four children were boys and girls, but all had colds.The entire Baker family came out to greet us on the front porch.They said they didn't see the girl and they never got up before seven.They had only met the Carters face to face, but they were completely unfamiliar.They asked more questions than Rowley and I asked them. Shortly after passing Baker's house, the gravel road turned into asphalt.According to the traces of Chrysler cars on the road, there should be no other cars passing by after that.Two miles from Baker's house, we pulled up again in front of a bright green little house surrounded by rose bushes. "Harvey! Hello, Harvey!" cried Rowley. "Hi, Ben." A tall man in his mid-thirties came to the door and walked through the flowers to our car.His facial features are as rough as his voice, and his pace is as leisurely as his tone.His last name is Whedon.Rowley asked if he had seen the Chrysler. "Yeah, Ben, I saw 'em," he said. "They were both passing here about seven-fifteen this morning, and they were driving fast." "They?" Rowley and I asked at the same time. "Two?" "There was a man and a woman in the car—or a girl, and I didn't look very closely and I saw them whizzing by. It was the woman driving the car, and she was quite small for me, with brown hair. " "What does that guy look like?" "Oh, about forty years old. She doesn't look very tall. She has a ruddy complexion and a gray hat and gray coat." "Have you met Mrs. Carter before?" I asked. "The bride across the bay? No. I've only seen the groom. Is that the woman?" I said we think it should be. "That man's not the groom," he said. "I've never seen that man." "If you want to see it again, do you recognize it?" "Probably—I saw him when he was going so fast." We found the Chrysler four miles away from where Whedon lived.It crashed head-on into a eucalyptus tree about a foot or two beyond the left lane.The windows were all shattered, and the metal in the front third of the car was crushed and deformed.The car was empty and there was no blood.There's no one around here except the deputy and me. We circled around several times, staring at the ground, and finally learned nothing new.The Chrysler had hit a eucalyptus, there were tire marks on the road, and what looked like footprints on the ground next to the car; but you can find these kinds of marks on any side of the road.We got in the borrowed car and drove on, asking people we saw along the way, and all the answers were: no, we didn't see her, or them. "Where's that Baker guy?" I asked Rowley as we turned back. I didn't see it, but it stands to reason that the man should have joined her in their territory." "That," he began, a little polemically, "is just a possibility, isn't it?" "Well, but it's always right to talk to them again." "If you think so," he responded dryly, "but don't drag me into an argument with them, he's my brother-in-law." This is quite different.So I asked, "How is he?" "Claude is nothing, just an ordinary person. My dad said that he can't do anything but children on the farm. But I haven't heard anyone say anything bad about him." "If you say he's fine, fine," I lied, "Let's leave him alone."