Give Up the Body

Louis Trimble

• Publisher: Prologue Books
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781440542022
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Crime & Mystery Literature
• Index: Literature

The characters...Adeline O'Hara, ex-WAC and reporter for the Teneskium (Oregon) Pioneer, also country correspondent for the Portland Press, who tells the story. She is young, red-headed, and Irish. She meetsTitus Willow, the pudgy passionate professional philanthropist, who is a badly frightened man. He is visitingCarson Delhart, the Portland millionaire, who dislikes giving interviews, and who wants to marry Titus Willow's daughterDaisy Willow, small and babyish, with a penchant for suicide. She is engaged to Arthur Frew, Titus Willow's assistant, a very sullen young man who dislikes everyone and everything. He causes Adeline a lot of trouble. Also involved isGlory Martin, beautiful ice-blonde ward of Carson Delhart. She is rumored to be his mistress, and has definite tendencies toward dipsomania and nymphomania. Watching out for her isPotter Hilton, Delhart's extremely efficient secretary, who is cold and precise and at times very frightening. He introduces Adeline toMrs. Edna Willow, Titus' who had a very bad disposition. She is concerned with making a good marriage for Daisy until murder intervenes. Suspected by police isTim Larson, a high school friend of Adeline's and now Delhart's chauffeur. He is in love with Glory Martin. He lives with Mrs. Larson, his Irish mother, and Mr. Larson, called Big Swede, although he is half a head shorter than his son, Tim. Along with everyone else, they dislikeGodfrey Tiffin, the assistant county prosecutor, who was Adeline's first suitor, whom she rejected. He has never forgiven her and causes her a great deal of trouble even thoughJocko Bedford, the sheriff, s on her side most of the time. Then there isJeff Cook, the star reporter for the Portland Press, who is sent to Teneskium to help Adeline cover the murder, and is involved while helping her to try to prove Tim Larson's innocence. He becomes a good friend ofJud Argyle, Adeline's boss, owner of the Weekly Teneskium Pioneer, who smells his liquor instead of drinking it, andBosco, the cat who saves Adeline's honor, and who had a tremendous appetite for newsprint, string, and shoelaces, andNellie, Adeline's ancient jalopy, whose death causes Titus Willow a lot fo grief later on. She is one of Adeline's problems, along with the missing felt hat, the body in the river, and Jeff Cook.Adeline becomes more and more involved with Godfrey Tiffin, who wants to put her in jail (especially after he finds Jeff Cook's pajama's in her dresser) until her midnight swim in her lingerie and an attempted suicide help point out the solution.

XII

I STOOD UP, shaking. “Tell them,” I insisted, pointing to the window. “Tell them now or they’ll accuse you of favoring me.”

Tiffin smiled smugly and walked to the window where the reporters were. I ran out of the room to the kitchen. Mrs. Larson was still there, looking bewildered and apparently finishing a good cry. I patted her, said, “It will be all right, Ma.” and went to the telephone.

When I had The Press, I said, “This is O’Hara at Delhart’s. Get me rewrite.” They did and I went on: “Assistant County Prosecuting Attorney Godfrey Tiffin of Teneskium County today let zeal overcome common sense when he arrested an obviously innocent man for the murder of Carson Delhart, Portland millionaire.”

“Hey!” someone spluttered into the phone.

“Take it,” I said, “and sign it Jeff Cook. He wants that lead used. He’s out getting more dope.” That seemed to do the trick and after spouting some more I hung up. I turned to Mrs. Larson.

“Tim will be okay,” I assured her again.

She was crying again. “That big booby,” she sobbed. “He confessed.”

I had to sit down. My knees simply went to pieces. I dropped into a convenient kitchen chair and stared hopelessly at her, trying to digest what she has said. She nodded vehemently at my incredulous expression. “He did.”

I had really put myself out on a limb—and how Jeff Cook would love me for it. If only she had told me before I phoned in the story! But I took a deep breath and tried again. He’s just protecting Glory,” I said. “Even Tiffin should know that.”

Before Mrs. Larson could answer, Jocko threw open the kitchen door. He had the glint of a legal eavesdropper in his eye. “I let you say it, Addy,” he told me in that deceptively mild voice of his. He wasn’t happy now. “To teach you a lesson. He wasn’t protecting her. They had a fight and he’s sore.” He took my arm and pulled me into the passage. His grip was as gentle as his voice, and just as deceptive. “Addy, you go slow.”

“I don’t care,” I said. “Tim wouldn’t do a thing like that. And she wouldn’t either. I don’t care.” I wanted to cry. I felt miserable. I stood there, fighting back tears and reasoning with myself. After all, I was supposed to be an impartial reporter in this case. If I let my emotions take control I would be of little use to anyone: myself, The Press, or Tim Larson.

“Now, Addy,” Jocko said, “they did fight. He admitted it. He knew she was cheating on him.” I waited for him to go on. When he did I was startled, but not stunned as I had been by Mrs. Larson’s statement. Jocko said, “She was cheating on him with Hilton.”

After I had absorbed that one I managed a laugh. “In that case, Jocko, he wouldn’t have killed Delhart. He would have killed Hilton. And anyway, Glory wouldn’t be an accomplice.”

“Tim Larson,” he said, “thought Delhart was Hilton. He admitted he killed the wrong man. Glory told him Hilton was bothering her and egged him on. He found out too late that it was she who had been bothering Hilton.”

“Oh, Jocko,” I said, “and you fell for that. You know Tim Larson too well to be such a sucker.”

Jocko shook my arm a little. “Addy, a man in love like Tim was will do most anything. Tim said it was after he did the killing that he fought with her. He even tried to kill her he got so mad. He threw her in the water. That’s why she got so wet.”

“Take it easy, Jocko,” I said. “That doesn’t fit in with her story.”

“Of course not,” he said. He snorted like a horse. “Think she’d implicate herself by telling you?”

“It doesn’t hang together,” I said stubbornly.

“Yes it does. Tim didn’t even know he had killed the wrong man until Hilton called him to go on that search. It makes sense, Addy, and we’ll prove that it does.”

“The confession won’t hold in court,” I said.

“We won’t need it. We’ll get plenty of evidence without it. And enough to put her right alongside Tim.”

I didn’t say anything but I was thinking, “That still doesn’t account for everyone else in this household being scared half to death.” And not only after Delhart’s murder but the day before as well.

I did the only thing I could to save face with Jocko. I walked out on him. I went upstairs, straight to Glory’s room. The deputy at the door refused to let me in. I did everything but kiss him and he only got red and mulish. It was obvious that I lacked charm and technique, maybe both. I went away from there feeling low. I wanted to be in on Glory’s reaction when the confession statement was broken to her.

I heard movement as I drifted past Daisy Willow’s room. On impulse I knocked. There was no guard here, so evidently Tiffin regarded the case as all but closed.

“Yes?” The voice didn’t sound like Daisy.

“It’s Adeline O’Hara,” I said. “Could I see you for a moment?”

The door opened and Mrs. Willow stood there. By daylight she looked rather formidable. She was still short and tubby but she held her ground like an Irish fishwife. She had been pretty once, not many years ago, but it was obvious that she hadn’t bothered to fight her middle-aged spread and had turned dowdy. Her hair was still a nice, rich brown and well cared for. Her makeup was well done. But her dress was atrocious.

“May I come in?”

“We have no statement to make,” she said flatly. She wasn’t being so sweet today. I liked her even less than I had last night. I looked over her shoulder and saw Daisy standing at the vanity in a slip. She looked as if she had been crying.

“I just came to see if Miss Willow is feeling better.” I said. Mrs. Willow filled the doorway and there seemed to be no chance of getting around her. “And,” I added, trying again, “to get your reaction. The feminine viewpoint.” I watched her closely to see if she bluffed easily. “I have to send in a story of one kind of another.”

“At the proper time …” she began.

“Do you want the publicity to be good or bad?” I demanded. I said it more sharply than I intended but I could see Daisy making pleading motions at me, beckoning me in. So I shot my bolt. And it worked. People as precariously and necessarily in the public eye as the Willows were couldn’t afford bad publicity very often.

“Your taste is extremely bad,” Mrs. Willow informed me. Her dark eyes glowered at me and she set her mouth like a trap. But she stood aside. Once, I imagined, she had a pretty cupid’s bow mouth. But I was willing to bet that a bad disposition had made it turn down at the corners like it did. She looked about forty-five.

“Get a robe on,” she told Daisy tartly. She shut the door behind me. Daisy got into a robe all right but not before she had given me a chance to see purplish marks on her shoulders. I could easily imagine Mrs. Edna Willow doing that.

I made myself comfortable in a pinkish boudoir chair and lit a cigaret. Mrs. Willow wasn’t going to change her antagonism and I certainly wouldn’t bother to put myself out to conciliate her. She sat on the edge of the bed, very stiff and defiant. Daisy was at the vanity bench, playing at making up.

“You know the news, I suppose,” I said chattily.

“I was being interrogated when the young man confessed,” Mrs. Willow said.

“Then there’s no point in my asking whose felt hat is missing, is there?”

I couldn’t have asked for nicer reactions. Daisy went white, as if she would try her fainting act again. She held onto the sides of the vanity until her knuckles showed the strain. She said nothing at all.

Mrs. Willow was far less flamboyant about it, but it would have taken a blinder person than I to miss seeing that it got under her skin. And deeply.

She tightened her lips and looked poisonously at me. She held that a moment and then she expelled her breath. “You insolent creature!”

“Well, whose hat was it?”

Mrs. Willow took a moment to get control of herself, and then decided to play the scene differently. “What is this absurd story of a hat?”

“It seemed to upset Miss Willow,” I said, nodding in her direction. Daisy was staring hopelessly at me.

“I don’t know why it should upset her,” Mrs. Willow said. “She is upset over this horrible thing, naturally. It has been a ghastly experience. I tried to calm Arthur. But he is very excitable. Very.”

What this lovely gibberish had to do with a hat, I didn’t know. I said, “You mean it was Arthur Frew’s hat?”

“Stop it!” Those were Daisy Willow’s first words and she shrieked them hysterically. “Stop it—please! It was father’s hat and you know it.”

That was what I had been waiting for. And for Mrs. Willow’s reaction to it as well. But she disappointed me. She even seemed to expand under this statement. “Oh, that hat?” Her voice was a masterpiece of indifference. “Why didn’t you say so, dear?” She asked Daisy. She looked at me and shrugged. “She is so upset. You see, Titus brought an old fishing hat along. Yesterday he misplaced it. He was annoyed.”

“Miss Willow seemed to think the hat is connected with the murder,” I said.

But Mrs. Willow was equal to anything I could hand out. She certainly was taking this back-handed accusation of her husband in stride. She said, almost amiably, “Don’t be a fool, child. Someone borrowed Daddy’s hat. Or he misplaced it. This is another hat—if there is one at all. There are a lot of disreputable hats, you know. Any number of them.”

She was too calm about it. And she was overdoing th...