THE DOG DIED FIRST
by Bruno Fischer

Copyright © 1949 by Bruno Fischer
Appeared in Stories Not For the Nervous, Dell Publishing, 1965

eBook scanned & proofed by Binwiped 11-22-02 [v1.0]

Blood was on my mind that night, but it was blood of the French Revolution. I was correcting Modern European History papers while Dot was at a hen party at Marie Cannon's. At midnight I went to bed, knowing that between bridge and chitchat there was no telling when Dot would be home.
The sound of the car pulling into the driveway woke me. As we have no garage in our bungalow-type stucco house, we leave the car out in the open on the cinder driveway. I heard Dot enter the house through the back door, and then I was listening to water running in the kitchen.
It ran for a long time—too long for her to be getting a drink and she certainly wouldn't be washing herself at the kitchen sink. Drowsily I was wondering what she was up to now, and I wondered a lot more when she turned off the water and left the house again. The radium clock on the dresser said five minutes after one.
I turned on my side and looked through the window. Dot had left the car's headlights on and she was walking into their glare. The pail she carried in her right hand was evidently full of water. The weight of it made her neat hips sway. She opened the black sedan door, switched on the overhead light, dug a dripping scrubbing brush out of the pail and leaned inside the car.
So that explained her antics. No doubt somebody had spilled liquid on the upholstery and she was trying to scrub it off before it dried. I dug my head into the pillow to shut out the glow of the headlights coming in through the window.
I was almost asleep when the night lamp went on in the bedroom.
"Are you awake, darling?" Dot asked.
"Urn, umph, urn," I mumbled, turning my head to let her know I was too sleepy for conversation.
But as nothing ever stopped Dot from talking, my desire for slumber didn't. I'd trained myself to absorb her chatter without listening to it, and that was what I did then until a startling sentence jerked me fully awake.
"I couldn't get all the blood off," she had said. "Blood?" I breathed, opening my eyes wide. "Did you say blood?"
Dot was taking a nightgown out of a drawer. "He died on the way to the doctor," she said complacently. "I feel like a murderer."
She straightened up with the nightgown in her hand. The soft, dim night light played over her tightly and precisely formed body, and her face was as guileless as a doll's. "Who died?" I demanded hoarsely.
"The dog, of course," she said, dropping the nightgown over her head.
I sank back on the bed. A dog, of course. Well, what had I really expected?
"I wasn't going to tell you because you're always criticizing my driving," she explained. "Like when I smashed a fender last week. But I really couldn't help what happened tonight. The dog ran right under the wheel. Then when I got home I noticed the blood in the car and I tried to wash it off, but I couldn't quite because it had dried. I decided to tell you because you'll see it tomorrow."
I was drowsy again, but puzzled. "How does blood get inside a car when you run over a dog?"
"He was still breathing, so I took him to the vet, but he was dead when I got there. The dog, I mean. The poor little thing."
She put out the light and got into bed, but that didn't stop her voice. She told me about the dollar and seventeen cents she had lost at bridge and that Ida Walker looked dowdy and Marie Cannon stunning and Edith Bauer— "How about some sleep?" I complained. She was quiet—for about a minute, it seemed to me. Then she was shaking me.
"Bernie," she whispered, "there's somebody sneaking about outside with a flashlight."
The radium clock said ten minutes after three, which meant that I'd actually been asleep about two hours. Dot was sitting up, and past the vague outline of her shoulder and through the window I saw a splotch of light move along the side of the car.
"Maybe he's trying to steal the car," she whispered.
"Did you leave the key in the ignition?"
It didn't surprise me when she admitted that she thought she had. Snorting, I got out of bed and went to the window. Whoever held the flashlight seemed to have lost interest in the car and was walking toward the street.
"He's going away," I said hopefully. I was a man who liked to avoid trouble.
"I wonder what he wanted."
"I know what I want," I said. "Sleep."
I had one leg on the bed when the doorbell rang. I froze half on the bed, listening. There are few things more disturbing than a doorbell ringing at three in the morning.
"That must be the thief," Dot whispered.
I roused myself. "Thieves don't ring doorbells."
"Well, it's somebody," Dot pointed out.
It certainly was somebody. The doorbell kept on ringing. I fumbled into slippers and robe, went into the living room, turned on the light, opened the front door.
The man who entered held a flashlight in his hand, so he was the same one I had seen prowling outside. He had more paunch than chest and a lumpy face.
"Mr. Bernard Hall?" he said.
I nodded. "What is it?"
He didn't answer. He stepped past me into the living room, looked it over as if he were thinking of renting it, then fixed me with rather sad eyes.
"My boy Steve is in your History class. Stephan Ricardo."
"Ah, yes," I said, using my teacher-parent manner. But that was absurd. This man hadn't got me out of bed at three in the morning to discuss his son's scholastic problems. Then I remembered what Stephen Ricardo had told me his father did for a living, and I tensed.
"You're a detective," I said.
"That's right," Ricardo massaged his jowls. "Seems there's blood in your car."
"Is that what you were looking at with your flashlight?"
He nodded. "Uh-huh. There was an attempt made to wash it off, but it was soaked into the floor rug."
At that moment Dot came into the living room. She wore her flowered housecoat over the nightgown.
"I'm the one you want," she said. "I suppose I shouldn't have left the body in the bushes."
Ricardo pushed his hat back from his brow and blinked a couple of times. "You admit you did it, Mrs. Hall?"
"Should I have reported it to the police?" She handed him that disarming smile of hers. "The thing is, I didn't want any trouble."
"No," Ricardo said softly, "I guess you didn't want trouble." He kept looking at Dot as if he didn't quite believe she existed. "Why did you do it, Mrs. Hall?"
"It was an accident. He ran in front of the car."
Ricardo shook his head sorrowfully. "That won't get you anywhere, Mrs. Hall. His head was smashed in, but there were no other marks on his body."
"But that's impossible. I held him in my arms and his head looked all right. He seemed to be injured internally. He died before I could get him to the vet."
"The vet?" Ricardo said, blinking.
"Dr. Harrison, the veterinary on Mill Street," she explained patiently. "Where else would you take a dog?"
Ricardo opened his mouth, but he didn't say what he started to. Instead he drew in air. "Suppose, Mrs. Hall, you tell me about it."
Dot settled herself in the armchair and placidly crossed her fine legs. I stuck a cigarette between my lips and noticed that the match shook in my hand. I didn't for a moment believe that a detective would awaken and question her at three in the morning because a dog had been run over.
"I was driving to a bridge game at Marie Cannon's tonight," she said. "About two blocks from here a little black dog ran in front of the car and I couldn't stop in time. I got out and there was the poor creature in terrible agony. He was a little thing, all black with white paws and a white splotch on his face. I don't know what breed, though he had some spitz in him, because when I was a little girl I had a spitz that was the darlingest—"
"What time was this?" Ricardo broke in.
"Close to eight-thirty. Marie Cannon was anxious that we get to her house at eight-thirty, and it was just about that when I left here. I would be late, but I couldn't leave an injured dog lying in the road, so I put him in the car and drove to the vet."
"To Dr. Harrison on Mill Street," Ricardo said rather grimly. "A good seven miles away, though you were late."
"Do you know of a nearer veterinary?"
Ricardo admitted that he didn't.
"So I had no choice," Dot said. "But when I got there, I saw that the poor dog was dead, so there was no point to taking him in to Dr. Harrison. I drove back to East Billford and left the dog in some bushes beside the road."
"Just like that," Ricardo sighed.
Dot flushed guiltily. "I suppose it was a cruel thing to do, but by then it was about ten minutes after nine and the bridge game couldn't start until I got there because I made the fourth and Marie Cannon would be furious with me. And, after all, the dog was dead, wasn't he? And I did look to see if he had a license, but he didn't have even a collar. He was obviously a stray dog, and I didn't know what else to do with him."
After that gush of words there was a silence. I filled it by saying, "I suppose killing a dog should be reported to the police. That's the law, isn't it?"
"Uh-huh." He glanced at me and then returned his sad gaze to Dot. "Did you get blood on your dress when you picked him up?"
"I'm sure I didn't. One of the women at the bridge game would have noticed if I had." She frowned. "He didn't seem to bleed at all, but he must have, because I saw blood in the car when I got home hours later."
"Where did you leave the—ah—body?"
"On Pine Road, in a section where there are no houses. Just this side of that dirt road."
"Wilson Lane," he said.
"Yes, that's it. A short distance past Wilson Lane, coming toward town, there are thick bushes on the right side. That's where I left him."
Ricardo nodded and scratched his cheeks with the backs of his fingers. He was a plump man with too much waist and jowls, but the set of his lumpy face frightened me.
"You better get dressed, Mrs. Hall," he said, "and go there with me."
Her blue eyes widened. "You mean right now?"
"Right now."
"I'm going too," I said.
"Sure," Ricardo said.
We went into the bedroom to put on clothes.
"I don't understand why they make so much trouble about a dog being run over," Dot complained as she slipped her shoes on. "Of course I feel bad about it, but getting people out of bed in the middle of the night! Why doesn't he just give me a ticket and I'll pay the fine?"
I didn't say anything. My stomach was sickishly empty.
We drove in Ricardo's sedan, the three of us in the front seat.
On the way, Dot said, "I suppose Al Wilcox saw me carry the dog into the bushes. He lives down the street and knows me. I saw his white police car pass when I returned to my car."
"That's right, Mrs. Hall," Ricardo said grimly.
It was less than a mile to the spot. Three cars were parked along the side of the road, and by the light of a couple of powerful electric lanterns I saw five or six men gathered on the narrow grassy stretch between the shoulder of the road and the line of thick bushes. One of them was Al Wilcox in his policeman's uniform.
"All these men because a dog was killed!" Dot said. Even she was catching on that something bigger than that must be up.
Ricardo had no comment. He led us across the road and then I saw the long shape under the canvas. The men had become silent and were looking at Dot.
"Mrs. Hall, is this the spot?" Ricardo asked.
She nodded and slipped her hand through my arm. She frowned at the size of the thing under the canvas.
"Give her a look, Al," Ricardo said.
Wilcox bent over and gripped one end of the canvas and pulled it down. Dot uttered a shrill scream. I felt her sag against my side, clinging to my arm.
"Why that's—that's Emmett Walker!" she gasped. "I played bridge with his wife tonight."
It was Emmett Walker, all right, but no longer the handsome insurance agent Dot and I had known for years. His blond hair was matted with dried blood and some of it had run in ragged streaks over his face.
"Cover him up, Al," Ricardo said wearily. He turned to Dot, and there was controlled fury in his voice. "He was murdered, Mrs. Hall."
"But—but where's the dog?" Dot stammered.
"There is no dog, Mrs. Hall."
"But I left him right there in those bushes."
"No, Mrs. Hall," Ricardo said. "You struck Emmett Walker over the head with something and killed him. You dragged him into your car and drove here and dragged him into the bushes. That's how the blood got in your car."
"It's not true!" Dot had recovered from the shock and was now merely indignant.
At that point I should have said something. I should have come to my wife's defense. But even if I hadn't been too choked for words, I couldn't think of any that would do any good.
Al Wilcox spoke up. "I was passing here at a few minutes after nine, Mrs. Hall, when I saw you come out of these bushes and get into your car. At two o'clock I passed this way again and by my headlights I saw what looked like a man's leg sticking out of the bushes. I investigated and found him."
"Well, I didn't do it," Dot said angrily. "Why would I want to kill Emmett Walker?"
"Suppose you tell us, Mrs. Hall."
Dot turned to me in exasperation. "You try to make him understand, darling."
I gulped air into my lungs. I said, "Of course you didn't do it," but my voice quavered.
Ricardo moved away from us to consult with the other policemen in undertones. When he returned to us, he asked Dot if the dress she had on was the one she had worn at the bridge game. She said that it was. Then he asked me for the keys to my car and handed them to Wilcox.
"Okay, let's go," Ricardo snapped.
I didn't ask him where. I knew where.
This time there were four of us in the sedan. I sat beside Ricardo, who drove, and Dot sat in the back seat with another detective. Ricardo didn't waste time. He had questions for Dot as we drove.
"Where did you say that bridge game was?"
"At Marie Cannon's house."
"Is she the wife of George Cannon, the lawyer?"
"Yes."
"Who else was there?"
"There were only four of us. Besides Marie and myself, there were Edith Bauer and Ida Walker." Her voice broke a little. "Poor Ida! Who is going to break the news to her?"
"She knows already," Ricardo said. "She didn't take the news too hard."
"They haven't got along too well lately. There were rumors that Emmett wasn't—well, exactly faithful to her." Dot leaned forward toward the back of Ricardo's neck, and her voice was breathless. "Do you think that Ida killed .him?"
"I know who killed him," Ricardo said crisply.
That ended all talk until we reached the County Building, which also contained police headquarters and the county fail. Dot was taken into an office on the second floor, but I got no farther than the door.
"You might as well go home," Ricardo told me. "Your wife is being held."
"What are you going to do to her—give her the third degree?"
His lumpy face smiled a little. "We're going to question her."
"She's entitled to have a lawyer present."
"Sure." He waved a pudgy hand. "You'll find a phone booth down the hall."
I went into the booth and dialed George Cannon's number His voice was drowsy, but it got wide awake when I told him what was up.
"I'll be right there," he said.
I waited out in the hall. In ten minutes George Cannon arrived. His hair was mussed and his suit looked like a sack on his frail body, but that wasn't because he'd dressed in a hurry. He always managed to look seedy and disheveled, though he was the most prominent lawyer in East Billford.
Briefly I gave him the details. His thin mouth tightened as he listened.
"Emmett was supposed to call for Ida tonight," he told me. "She waited in my house until one o'clock and then I drove her home. I think she suspected that he was out with another woman. And all that time he was dead."
"Don't stand here talking," I said. "God knows what they're doing to Dot."
"Oh, they won't be rough with a woman. You wait here, Bernie."
He knocked at the door through which Dot had been taken and was admitted.
For a full hour I paced that lonely hall before George came out.
Glumly he shook his head. "They've taken her up to a cell through  another door. She hasn't been charged yet. There are still loose ends." "How does it look?"
"It's too soon to tell," he said, not meeting my eyes. "If the blood in the car is a dog's their circumstantial case will be shot." He patted my shoulder. "No use hanging around here. Go home and get some sleep."
He dropped me off at my house. Dawn was coming up, and in the grayness of it I saw that my car was gone. The police had taken it because it was evidence—evidence that might mean life or death.
The house was terribly empty. I went into the bedroom and there was her nightgown flung across the foot of the bed. I remembered how only a few hours ago I had watched her getting into that nightgown, and nobody could have looked less like a woman who had just murdered somebody.
She hadn't. She said so. She was flighty and talkative, but she had never before lied to me.
But she had never before had occasion to lie about murder. . . .
I tossed in bed for an hour and slept fitfully for another hour. Then the doorbell woke me. It was Herman Bauer, a fellow teacher at the high school. His wife Edith was an old friend of Dot's.
Herman, chubby and usually jolly, was now glum and embarrassed. He said that he had stopped off on his way to school to tell me that the police had questioned him and Edith.
"They got us out of bed at six-thirty this morning," Herman said. "They asked Edith about the bridge game last night. When Dot arrived, when she left, if she'd been in the house all that time, and so on. They also asked how well Dot and Emmett had known each other." He fumbled uneasily with the brim of his hat. "Neither Edith nor I mentioned that Dot used to go out with Emmett."
"That was years ago," I said. "Before Dot and I were engaged."
"Of course." Herman watched his fingers on his hat. "But the police mightn't understand." He turned to the door. "If there's anything I can do for you, let me know."
After Herman Bauer was gone, I stood in the same spot for a long time. He had it all figured out, the way everybody else figured it and the police certainly did. I couldn't know that they weren't right.
Rousing myself, I went to the phone to call the school and say that I wouldn't be in that day and maybe not for the rest of the week. Before I could start to dial the number, the phone rang.
It was George Cannon, and he said, "Bernie, can you come over to the district attorney's office right away?"
"Did anything new break?"
"Yes, but I'm afraid it's not good. The blood in your car has been analyzed." He paused and then added tonelessly, "It's human blood, and it matches Emmett Walker's blood type."
There went the last hope, I thought as I hung up. Police science had proved Dot's story about the dog a lie, and if that was false, everything else she had said was.
I dressed and left the house. The police had my car, so I had to walk to the County Building.
Detective Ricardo and George Cannon were in the district attorney's office. John Fair, the D. A., was one of those backslapping politicians who never met a voter without heartily pumping his hand, but when I entered his office he merely nodded gravely and remained in his seat.
"The analysis of the blood in your car leaves no doubt of your wife's guilt," Fair began brutally. "It took her some forty minutes to arrive at the bridge game after she left home—a distance of little over a mile. We know now that her delay was not caused by killing a dog and driving out to Dr. Harrison and back. She told the far-fetched story about the dog to explain her delay and also the blood in her car. Obviously she met Emmett Walker and killed him with a blunt instrument, probably as he was sitting in the car with her."
"What time was Walker killed?" I asked, grasping at a straw. "I mean, if he died after she arrived at the bridge game—"
Ricardo shook his heavy head. "The medical examiner can't cut it that fine. Says he thinks Walker died between nine and ten-thirty last night, and he'll give or take half an hour at either end."
"What does my wife say?" I asked weakly. Fair shrugged irritably. "In spite of virtually conclusive evidence, she sticks to her preposterous story about the dog.  A very stubborn young woman and extremely foolish." He rose and came around his desk. "Hall, I'm not out for her neck. We have learned that she and Walker were sweethearts at one time. I'm sorry to have to say this to you, but it appears that she continued to be one of his women up until last night." 
"No!" I heard myself shout.
"We haven't proved it yet," Fair admitted, "but that explains her motive for killing him. Let us say that she struck him in jealous rage. In that case, I would not insist on a first-degree murder indictment. I want you to talk to her, Hall. I want you to make her see that it will be to her advantage to make a full confession."
"Prison," I said bitterly. "Is that what you offer her, years and years in prison?"
"It's better than the electric chair," Fair said softly and returned to his desk.
George Cannon hadn't said a word since I entered the office. He was our legal mind. I asked him for his opinion. "Bernie, I'm against any deal," he declared. "I believe I can get her off free."
He believed! I looked at him standing there, seedy and slight, and at his pinched face with that perpetually hungry expression. He was East Billford's top lawyer, but it was a small city and his reputation didn't extend beyond it. He didn't think her innocent—nobody did—but he was willing to risk her life to build up his reputation in a sensational murder trial.
"I'll talk to her," I told the district attorney. Ricardo led me upstairs to a small bare room containing only a few chairs, and left me there. A few minutes later a matron brought Dot in.
There were tired lines about her eyes and mouth, but she looked beautiful. She felt wonderful in my arms and her tremulous mouth was unendurably sweet. The electric chair, I thought dully, or years in prison that would be a living death for her.
After a minute she slipped out of my embrace. "I'd like a cigarette, darling," she said.
I lit it for her, and she sat down and crossed her legs and drew smoke into her lungs. "Darling," she said then, "they're saying terrible things about me."
She sounded indignant. Not frightened, not broken up, but merely outraged that she should be accused of having done anything wrong.
"They're even saying that Emmett was my lover," she went on angrily.
"Was he?"
When the words were out of my mouth, I hated myself for saying them. But I had to know.
Her  eyebrows  arched.   "Darling,  you  don't think that too?"
"Was he, Dot?"
"Certainly not." Again that vast indignation. "Emmett meant little to me, even when I went out a few times with him before I married you."
I bent over her and took her face between my hands and looked deeply in her blue eyes. They were grave and without deceit.
"Dot," I said, "did you kill him?"
"No."
"How did the blood get in the car?"
"From the dog I ran over."
But police science had proved that a man and not a dog had bled in the car. It didn't make sense that she would tell the truth about everything but that. It was all of one piece. Frantically I wanted to believe her, but deep inside of me I didn't know.
I straightened up. She was my wife and I loved her.
"We'll fight them," I said.
When I returned to the district attorney's office, the same three men were there waiting for me.
"Well, is it a deal?" Fair asked.
"No," I said.
Ricardo sighed. Fair pounded his desk. "Very well, it will be first-degree murder then."
I turned away. George followed me out of the office and put his hand on my shoulder.
"We've got a good chance to lick them," he said. "I don't think, at any rate, that Fair can get a jury to give her the chair. We may get away with temporary insanity if she'll cooperate. I'll tell her exactly what to say on the stand, and if she sticks to it—"
"She's innocent," I said and walked away. I was running away from his legal logic, but I couldn't run away from my hellish doubts.
Emmett Walker had had an eye for pretty women, but he had married an unattractive one. He hadn't done well as an insurance agent. Financially, being the husband of a woman with a fat bank account had paid off better.
Ida Walker was dumpy, and she had a face to match. When she admitted me into the house, she didn't give the impression of a grieving widow. She was frank about it.
"I'm not a fool," she told me. "I was aware that Emmett was constantly betraying me."
"With Dot?" I asked, looking down at the carpet. Ida's voice was gentle.  "No,  Bernie. I never suspected Dot." Then she added, "But a wife is the last to know."
Or a husband, I thought, and the silence that followed was more embarrassing for me than for her. After a minute I asked her what time Emmett had been supposed to call for her last night.
"He wasn't definite," Ida said. "He told me he had work to do at his office and at eight-thirty dropped me off at Marie's in the car. He said he would try to be back before ten to watch a prize fight on the Cannons' television set. At one o'clock I gave up waiting for him and George drove me home."
"Weren't you worried when Emmett didn't show up?" "Worried?"  Ida Walker's lips curled.  "Not worried in the way you mean. I assumed that he was with another woman. Then the police got me out of bed and told me he was dead."
I stood up and Ida accompanied me to the door. "I'm a lot sorrier for Dot than for Emmett," she said. "He deserved what he got. That devil had a way with women. Even I could forgive him a lot. I was willing to accept crumbs from him, but I don't regret that he's gone." I wondered how much she had forgiven him in the end. Edith Bauer was Dot's best friend. She was a highstrung, delicately formed woman whose figure would be a delight in porcelain. When I told her that Dot was being charged with first-degree murder, she burst into tears.
Her husband was there. Herman lived close enough to the high school, where he taught science, to walk home for lunch, and I found them seated at the dinette table.
After Edith dried her eyes, she asked me if I would care to have a bite with them. I shook my head. I'd had no desire that morning for anything but coffee. I sat at the table with them and asked Edith if any of the four women at the bridge game last night had left for any length of time.
"You mean left the house?" she said, frowning at the question.
"At least left the room."
"Not for more than a minute or two," Edith replied. "We four were playing bridge all the time, from about a quarter to nine until almost one o'clock, when we broke off. Of course we took time off for a snack, but we were all in the same room."
"Who served refreshments?"
"Marie, naturally, but she didn't have to leave the house to do that."
"How could you start playing at a quarter to nine when Dot didn't arrive until after nine?"
"George Cannon made the fourth," she said. "He wasn't anxious to play, and when Dot arrived he gave up his seat to her and went down to the basement to work with his tools. Cabinet-making is his hobby, and he showed us the record cabinet he's building out of bleached oak. It was one of the most attractive—"
She broke off. "How can I talk about furniture at a time like this?" she wailed and started to sniffle.
I turned my attention to Herman, whose chubby face was thoughtful as he chewed his food.
"Where were you last night, Herman?" I asked. "Home alone, catching up on my reading." He scooped up a slice of tomato from his plate. "Why is that important?"
"Because," I said carefully, "Dot wasn't the only woman at the bridge game who used to go out with Emmett Walker."
"Meaning me," Edith said. "I had quite a crush on Emmett when I was a kid." She rose quickly—too quickly, it seemed to me—to go into the kitchen for the coffeepot.
Herman had his fork poised in midair, and he studied me over it. "What are you getting at, Bernie?"
"I'm not sure," I muttered.
And that was the truth. I was groping in the dark, trying to veer guilt away from Dot to somebody else. Anybody else.
I went to see Marie Cannon. Marie was a full-bodied, slow-moving woman who caught and held men's eyes when prettier women were ignored. The housecoat she wore had a tight, high waist and a wide, low neckline that accentuated her lushness. A handkerchief was balled in her fist, and like Edith Bauer she wept at the sight of me, for she too was a close friend of Dot's.
"I can't imagine Dot killing anybody in cold blood," she said. "It must have been an accident, or temporary insanity."
I didn't argue. I had come to ask questions, and my first one was whether Dot had been greatly upset when she had arrived last night.
Marie thought that over. "She seemed somewhat out of breath, but that was all. George played out the hand before he gave up his seat to her, and as she waited she rather calmly told us that she had run over a dog." Marie unclasped her hand to stare at her moist handkerchief. "George is afraid that the fact that she had a story about killing a dog all prepared before she got here will sound bad before a jury."
Somebody came down the stairs. Marie and I turned our heads as George entered the room. He wore a faded bathrobe and flapping slippers.
"I came home for a nap," he explained. "I had only a couple of hours' sleep last night when your phone call woke me." He looked at me. "You can use some sleep too, Bernie."
Sleep? Could there be any sleep for me while Dot was shut in by four walls?
"Why would Dot have said she left a dead dog in the spot where she left the body?" I said. "If she'd killed Emmett, she would have known that his body would be found there instead."
George shrugged. "She was aware that Wilcox had seen her come out of the bushes and that when the body was found Wilcox would put two and two together. She was frantic."
"Marie says she didn't seem very frantic when she arrived here a few minutes later."
"No, she didn't," George agreed, "but it's hard to tell with a woman like Dot. She's always breathless and bubbling and excited anyway. And she's—well, Bernie, she's lovely and charming, but her mind jumps about. I mean, that far-fetched story about a dog might have seemed like a valid explanation to her at the time, but she isn't exactly a logical person."
Not at all logical, I thought, and her flightiness used to annoy me. Now it might mean her death or imprisonment. Suddenly I was so tired that I could hardly stand. I leaned against the television cabinet, and I remembered that it was on that screen Emmett Walker had intended to see a prize fight last night. Or so Ida had told me.
I said, "The one who had most reason to kill Emmett Walker was his wife."
Marie sat down abruptly. "Yes," she whispered. "You mean before she got here last night?"
"It's possible," I said. "By the way, where was Emmett's car found?"
"At his house," George replied. "The police believe that he returned home after driving Ida here and then Dot picked him up in her car." He shook his head. "I've considered every angle too, Bernie, but they all lead to Walker's blood in your car and Dot's preposterous story about a dog."
I wasn't being logical either. I looked at Marie, who was opening her handkerchief to blow her nose, and at George, who tightened his lips glumly.
"I'll do my best to save her," George said. "The odds are that she can be got off within the law."
Odds, like gambling odds. Gambling against whether she would die or spend long years in jail or be released with the stigma of blood on her hands.
There was pity in their eyes. Pity for me, as well as for Dot. I could not stand it and I said good-bye and got out of there.
Sometimes, when I was worn out from a day of teaching and wanted quiet to read my paper, Dot's incessant and meaningless chatter would irritate me. Now the absence of her voice made the house terribly empty. I had come back home, but I couldn't endure being there without Dot. I was about to leave when the doorbell rang.
A ten-year-old boy stood there—Larry Robbins, son of the druggist who lived in the next block.
"Mr. Hall," he said, "did you see a little black dog?"
I stared at him.
"He got lost," the boy said. "I let him out for a few minutes last night and he never came back. So I'm asking all the neighbors if they saw him. Did you, Mr. Hall?"
With an effort I kept my voice calm. "What did he look like?"
"A little thing about so big. All black except for a white spot over his nose, and white paws. I got him only last week—my uncle gave him to me—and we didn't get a collar for him yet or a license. Maybe somebody thought he was a stray dog, fed him and took him in."
"What time did you let him out last night?"
"It was after eight o'clock. You didn't see him, did you?"
"Thanks, Larry," I said and patted his head.
He blinked at me. "Thanks for what, Mr. Hall?"
"Never mind," I said, and then added, "No, I didn't see your dog, Larry."
A couple of hours later, the small bulldozer I had hired arrived near the intersection of Pine Road and Wilson Lane. I'd been waiting there for some time. When the bulldozer had trundled off the truck, I told the driver where to start digging. Then I drove to the nearest phone and called Detective Ricardo at police headquarters.
"Can you come right away to where Emmett Walker's body was found last night?" I said.
"You got something, Mr. Hall?"
"I don't know," I said. "But if I have, I want you there as a witness."
I hurried back to where the bulldozer was plowing up a fifty-foot-wide area that started at the bushes along the road. Though he'd dug some three feet deep and twenty feet into the field beyond, he had so far turned up nothing but boulders. I walked beside the bulldozer blade, my feet sinking into the loose, upturned dirt.
The scooped-out area doubled in size before Ricardo showed up. His fat hips waddled as he stumbled over the chewed-up ground. He brooded at the crawling, bucking bulldozer and sighed.
"Faith moves mountains, eh, Mr. Hall?" he commented dryly.
I told him about Larry Robbins' lost dog.
"So why didn't you come to the police and let them do the digging?" he demanded.
"Because there'd be too much red tape before I got them to move, if they moved at all."
Ricardo scratched his jowls reflectively. "This field belongs to Gridley. He wouldn't like what you're doing to it."
"I obtained his permission. I'm paying him and promised to have it leveled off after—"
The driver yelled. He was climbing off the seat. Ricardo and I ran toward him. There, on the ground, half covered by dirt, was a patch of black fur. It was some fifty feet back in an almost straight line from where Walker's body had been found.
Ricardo stooped, brushed dirt away from the fur, pulled the dead animal out into the clear by one of its legs. I had never before seen that little black dog, but I had heard it described by both Dot and Larry Robbins.
Dot hadn't had a logical mind. She had only told the truth. Suddenly I was feeling fine. I had never felt better in my life.
"Do you believe now that my wife ran over a dog?"
Ricardo straightened up and dusted his hands. "Why should I?"
"W-w-why?" I stammered from sheer incredulousness. "Don't you believe what you see?"
"I see a dead dog, all right, but there are at least two things this dog didn't do. He didn't bleed in your car and he didn't leave Walker's body in the bushes. I think I know how the dog got here."
"He was buried by the murderer."
Ricardo smiled thinly. "That's what you'd like us to think. Early this morning, after you left police headquarters, you decided to try to save your wife by making her cockeyed yarn seem true. You found a little black dog and killed it and buried it here. Then you pretended to find it."
The bulldozer driver was listening open-mouthed. As for me, bitter anger had replaced my elation.
"Are you going to have the dog examined?"
"Sure, Mr. Hall, though it probably won't be possible to tell if a car or a club killed it."
There was nothing to be said. The finding of the dead dog proved everything to me and nothing to the detective. I told the bulldozer driver to shove back the dirt he had scooped out and walked to my car. The car had been returned to me a few hours ago by the police—with the bloody floor rug missing.
Ricardo moved at my side. "I guess I'd do about the same thing for my wife," he said sympathetically, "but I'd be smarter."
I whirled at the edge of the road to face him. "So you're smart! But not smart enough to see that a story can sound so far-fetched that it has to be true. My wife isn't quite the fool all of you try to make her out."
Ricardo had no comment for long moments, and his sad black eyes were reflective. He wasn't a bad guy, I thought. Not one of those bullying, blustering cops. He was trying to do what seemed to him the right thing.
"You know," he mused, looking back at the splotch of black fur on the field, "There's another answer if your wife's story about the dog is true."
"It's about time you saw it."
Suddenly he grinned at me. "You wait here. I have to take the dog's body in. Might be evidence."
He waddled over the chewed-up field. It struck me that I could accomplish more than a policeman could, and by the time he caught up with me I could hand him something. I got into my car and drove off.
Marie Cannon came to the door. Those harsh, stricken lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth had deepened within a few hours.
"George isn't home," she said.
"I'm here to see you," I said.
She led me into the living room. She sat down, keeping her full-fleshed body stiff. I stood over her.
"Marie, you've been weeping all day for Emmett Walker."
She brought the handkerchief to her nose. "Of course I'm sorry he's dead. He was a friend."
"A friend and a lover," I said. "And maybe you're weeping a little for Dot too—or for your own conscience—because you know Dot is innocent. You know that Emmett was alive at around ten o'clock, which means that Dot couldn't have killed him."
I heard a car pull into the driveway at the side of the house. Ricardo, I thought, right at my heels. I hoped that he would have sense enough to let me handle Marie.
"No, no!" Marie was saying.
"We found the dog buried near where Emmett Walker's body was found," I told her. "That proves Dot's story, and it proves that one of the people who was in this house last night killed him. They were the only ones who knew where Dot had left the dead dog."
There was a whisper of feet on the porch. Then silence. That meant that Ricardo was playing along with me. He was letting me break down Marie while he listened through the open window.
Marie was sniffling into her handkerchief.
"This is what must have happened," I went on. "Last night, you went into the kitchen to prepare refreshments. Through the window you saw Emmett Walker arrive to watch the fight on your television. You slipped out through the kitchen door to talk to him."
"I didn't kill him!" she burst out. "Let me alone!"
"You didn't kill him!" I agreed. "None of you four women in the house could have, because none of you was out of the house long enough to drive the body away. But there was a fifth person in the house—your husband."
Now, beside the edge of the curtain on one of the two windows looking out on the porch, I could see a man's hip. Ricardo was taking it all in.
"No!" Marie was wailing. "No, no!"
"Yes," I said. "It's the only possible way it could have happened. George was in the basement making a record cabinet. I've been down there a number of times. There's a ground-level window looking out to the side of the house. George saw you run out to meet Emmett. Maybe you kissed Emmett. Maybe you arranged a meeting with him. Then you returned to the kitchen and took the refreshments out to your guests. Emmett lingered outside so as not to enter the house at the same time you did and give his wife ideas. And George came out of the basement through the garage door, and in his hand he held a hammer, or whatever heavy tool he'd snatched up from his work bench."
Marie wept. In a minute she would be talking for Ricardo to hear.
I glanced toward the window and saw that Ricardo had shifted his position and that considerably more than his hip was now visible.
Only it wasn't Ricardo. The detective had a fat paunch, a padded hip. The man out there was thin, frail. George Cannon, who had seen my car parked in front of his house and had come up on the porch quietly.
All right, let him hear. Maybe he would break down when Marie did. Or he would flee and that would be as good as a confession.
I turned back to Marie. "So George killed Emmett Walker in blind, jealous fury. Then there he was with a murdered man on his hands. He had heard Dot tell that she had run over a dog and where she had left it. He saw how he could divert suspicion wholly from himself by shoving it all on Dot. He dragged the body into Dot's car, and the battered head bleeding on the floor rug fitted in with his scheme. He drove to where Dot had said she'd left the dog and found it and buried it in the fields behind the bushes and left Emmett's body there. He returned and drove Emmett's car to Emmett's house and walked back. The whole business had taken some time, but you women playing cards didn't know he was gone. Maybe he left one of his machine tools running so that you heard it upstairs and assumed he was in the basement."
"The disgrace!" Marie blubbered. "The scandal!"
And then I saw the gun. Outside the window George Cannon held it in his skinny hand against his hip. Rays from the sinking sun glinted on the barrel.
Breath clogged my throat. There was no chance in flight. Only in more words, and in not letting him realize that I knew he was there.
"So that's why you protected him," I said, "though he murdered the man you loved. You knew that George had killed him. Having seen Emmett alive and outside the house at ten, there was no other possibility. Yet you were ready to see Dot die for George's crime."
Her shoulders heaved. "George said he could get her off.
And there would have been a frightful scandal if George had gone on trial. Everybody would have known that Emmett had been my—my—" Her voice went completely to pieces.
I looked at Marie as I spoke, but actually my words were directed to the man outside with the gun. "The police know the truth," I said. "When they found the dog's body, the pieces fell into place. With your evidence, there will be no doubt of his guilt. The police are on their way now to—"
Outside, somebody yelled. The man at the window jerked around, and all of George Cannon's slight body became visible. He held the muzzle of his gun against his temple.
The sound of the shot wasn't very loud. Then he crumpled out of sight below the window sill, and I saw Ricardo running up the porch steps.
I dashed out to the porch. Ricardo was looking down at the dead man.
"Shot himself when he saw me," Ricardo said. "Guess he thought I was coming to arrest him."
"Yes," I muttered. "I made him think so."
He raised angry black eyes to me. "Why didn't you wait for me?"
"Does it matter now?" I said, turning away from George Cannon's body.
Inside the house, Marie was sobbing brokenly.
"I guess not," Ricardo said softly. He went into the house.
I walked as far as the porch steps so that I would not be too near the dead man. In a little while, I thought, I would be bringing Dot home.
And I would buy Larry Robbins another dog.

-END-