The Dame by Richard Stark

Author:Richard Stark
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press

14

EVA MILFORD was an overwound mainspring. Her hairdo was so tight and rigid it looked as though it had been set by the Spanish Inquisition. Her torso didn’t look girdled, it looked petrified, like an old forest. Her dark-brown suit and fussy coral blouse made her look like the mean old broad in the steno pool, and her face was as shut up as a bank on Sunday.

She came in and remained standing. Unbelievably, she had a pocketbook clutched in both hands, over her stomach. She looked like an indignant mother coming to get her juvenile delinquent out of the precinct house. “I want to go home,” she said, and she sounded indignant, too. “I’ve had enough of this, and I want to go home.”

“There’s a dead woman in this house,” Danamato started portentously.

“Down in the freezer, as a matter of fact,” Grofield said pleasantly.

It startled her, as it was supposed to do. She looked at Grofield wide-eyed, but said nothing.

Danamato glowered briefly at Grofield, then looked back at Eva Milford. “The point is,” he said, “she’s here. And she’s dead. And nobody’s going home, nobody’s going anywhere, till I’m sure who did it.”

“Well, I didn’t do it, and my husband certainly—”

“Sure you did,” Grofield said.

She stared at him again. “What? What?”

“You suspected your husband was up to his shenanigans again,” Grofield said. “You suspected it for a couple of weeks, didn’t you?”

“My husband promised me—”

“That just made it worse,” Grofield said. “When he broke that solemn promise he’d made after the high-school girl, when he went—”

“He didn’t break it! What are you saying?”

“I’m saying,” Grofield told her, “that after you saw your husband come out of Belle Danamato’s room last night, you went in there with every intention of murdering her. First you hit her with something, knocking her out, and then you wrapped that wire around her neck.”

“Me? Me?” One hand clutching her pocketbook, the other clutching the back of the chair she hadn’t sat down in, Eva Milford tottered there, staring in horror and disbelief at Grofield.

Grofield turned casually to Danamato. “Look at her,” he said. “Guilt is written all over her.”

Danamato didn’t look at Eva Milford; he looked at Grofield. “You never stop, do you?” he said. “This woman? Look at her, for Christ’s sake!”

“You don’t think she’d kill to keep her husband? Look at her face, her clothes. Look how she holds that purse. You think she’s just a sweet little matronly lady? That woman’s a volcano. She’s one of these repressed bitches starts punching a bus driver every once in a while. You look at her, Danamato. You think I’m making this up?”

Danamato finally did turn his eyes to Eva Milford, in time to see the gradual transition from shock to anger. Her eyes were small and very pale and full of hate as she glared at Grofield. Danamato thoughtfully said, “You’re making it up, all right, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t maybe true anyway.”

“You bastard!” Eva Milford screamed and came rushing at Grofield with her pocketbook swinging.

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