“Well, only indirectly.”
“And Bollman tried to chisel in on it?”
“Not on that. On something else.”
“On what?”
Bertha said, “Nothing that would have anything to do with Kosling, nothing that would account for his death.”
“What was it?”
“I’m not certain that I’m going to tell you.”
“I think you are, Mrs. Cool. What was it?”
Bertha said, “It had to do with an automobile accident. That’s something that I’m working on, and I don’t think my clients would want any information made public right at the present time.”
“You’re not making it public. You’re making it to me.”
“I know, but you have a way of making reports that get into the newspapers.”
“This is murder, Mrs. Cool.”
“I know, but what I know about him doesn’t have anything to do with this murder.”
“How do you know?”
“It wasn’t anything anyone would kill him about.”
“But you say he’s a blackmailer and a chiseller?”
“Yes.”
“What makes you say that?”
“His methods.”
“What’s wrong with them?”
“Everything.”
Sergeant Sellers said, “All right, we’ll go outside and talk in the car for a little while. This is the address Rodney Kosling gave you?”
“Yes.”
“Is there anything that you know that would make you think this man, Bollman, lived here?”
“No.”
“You don’t know where he lived?”
Bertha Cool said impatiently, “Of course not. Why ask me all that stuff? How about the man’s driving licence? How about his registration card? How about –”
“That,” Sergeant Sellers said, “is just the point. Either someone had frisked him and taken everything that could have possibly been a means of identification, or he emptied his pockets of everything except money. Apparently his money hasn’t been touched. It had evidently been taken from a wallet and pushed hurriedly down into the pockets. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you, Mrs. Cool?”
“Why should I?”
“I don’t know,” Sellers said. “It opens the door to some interesting speculation. The fact that the murder was committed with a trap gun indicates that the murderer wanted to claim his victim while he was far away, building up an alibi for himself. But quite evidently after the man’s death, someone went through his pockets—unless the man cached the stuff from his pockets somewhere. There couldn’t have been a very great margin of time, and you admit that you were here. Therefore, I ask you if you know anything about what was in his pockets?”
“No, I don’t.”
Sergeant Sellers said, “Well, we may as well go back to the automobile. All right, come on boys. Charlie, you can stay here and keep an eye on the place. Usual instructions—sew it up tight. Let no one in without a pass until after the fingerprint men have finished with the place; then we’ll give the newspapers a tumble and move the body. All right, Mrs. Cool, you come with us.”
In the automobile Bertha Cool answered questions with monosyllables or, at times, with a tight-lipped silence. She steadfastly refused to give any information as to her connection with Jerry Bollman or the reason she had for characterizing him as a blackmailing chiseller.
Sergeant Sellers gave it up after a while. He said, “I can’t force you to answer these questions, Mrs. Cool, but a grand jury can.”
“No, they can’t. I have a right to treat certain communications as confidential.”
“Not the way I look at it.”
Bertha Cool said, “I’m in business. I’m running a detective agency. People hire me to do things. If they wanted to tell their troubles to the law, they’d go to police headquarters in the first place.”
“All right,” Sellers said. “If you’re thinking so much of your future business, you might remember that police goodwill is an asset for a private detective agency and, on the other hand, the ill-will of the police isn’t going to make you any money.”
“I’ve told you absolutely everything I know that would help clear up the case. The things I’m withholding are private matters that have absolutely nothing to do with it.”
“I’d prefer to have you answer all my questions and let me be the judge of what’s pertinent and relative and what isn’t.”
“I know,” Bertha said, “but I prefer to handle it my way.” Sergeant Sellers settled himself back against the cushions.
“All right,” he said to the chauffeur, “we’ll drive Mrs. Cool home. I’ll telephone headquarters, and we’ll put out a general pick-up order for this blind man. Strange he isn’t home. He can undoubtedly throw some light on what’s happened. Let’s go, Mrs. Cool.”
Bertha Cool maintained an aloof; discreet silence until Sergeant Sellers had deposited her at the door of her apartment.
“Good night,” he said.
“Good night,” Bertha Cool announced, biting off the end of the word. She marched with unforgiving hostility across the sidewalk and up to the entrance leading to her apartment house.
The police car drove away.
Almost instantly Bertha Cool left the apartment house, walked rapidly down to the drugstore at the corner, summoned a taxicab, and once she had pulled herself into the interior, said to the driver, “I want to get to the Bluebonnet Apartments out on Figueroa Street, and I haven’t any time to waste.”
At the Bluebonnet Apartments, Bertha Cool pushed peremptorily at the bell button of Josephine Dell’s apartment, and it was with a feeling of relief that she heard Josephine Dell’s voice saying in the earpiece, “Who is it, please?”
“This is Mrs. Cool.”
“I’m afraid I haven’t time to talk with you, Mrs. Cool. I’m packing.”
“I must see you.”
“I have this new job, and I’m packing to take a plane. I –”
“I’ll talk to you while you pack,” Bertha said. “It will only take a few minutes, and –”
“Oh, all right.” The electric buzzer released the door catch.
Bertha Cool went on up and found Josephine Dell in the midst of that seemingly hopeless confusion which comes at moving time.
A trunk in the middle of the floor was two-thirds full. A suitcase on the bed was already filled, and there were other clothes laid out apparently to be taken along. A small bag was on the floor by the bed, and a large pasteboard carton was about half full of a miscellaneous assortment of odds and ends.
Josephine Dell, attired in blue silk pyjamas, was literally standing in the middle of things.
“Hello,” she said to Bertha Cool as though barely seeing her. “I’ve got all this packing to do before midnight. Going to store most of my stuff and get out of the apartment. Never realized what a hopeless job it was. Going to cram things in somehow, then take a bath, dress, and catch a midnight plane. I didn’t want to be rude, but if you’ve ever done any moving, you know exactly how I feel.”
“I know how you feel,” Bertha assured her, “and I only want a minute.”
She looked around for a vacant chair. Josephine Dell saw the look, laughed nervously, said, “Pardon me,” and hurried over to lift some folded clothes from a chair by the window.
Bertha said, “I’m going to get right to the point. How would you like to receive five hundred dollars in cash?”
“I’d like it.”
“I could get it for you.”
“How?”
“All you need to do is to sign a release, and –”
“Oh, that.”
“Well, what about it?” Bertha asked.
She laughed and said, “You’re the second one.”
“Meaning you’ve already signed up?”
“No.”
“Who was the first?”
“A witness who saw it. He hunted me up to tell me that it really wasn’t my f
ault, and I could collect from the insurance company. He said he’d make a contract with me by which he’d finance the whole thing entirely at his own cost and expense, give me fifty per cent. of whatever he received, and guarantee that my share would be at least five hundred dollars. I thought that was a very generous contract, don’t you?”
Bertha Cool remained silent.
“But,” Josephine Dell went on, “I couldn’t do it. I simply couldn’t. I told him I’d been thinking it over and had come to the conclusion that it was as much my fault as it was the man’s who was driving the automobile—perhaps more. He tried to tell me that that didn’t need to enter into it at all, that the insurance company wanted to get its files closed, and all I had to do was to co-operate and take in the money just like that,” and Josephine Dell gave her fingers a quick little snap.
“You wouldn’t do it?”
“I just laughed at him. I told him that it was out of the question, that I’d feel as though I’d stolen the money. That man who ran into me was really very nice—and I have been out only ten dollars for a doctor’s bill.”
“Did you get the name of the man who was driving the car?” Bertha asked.
“No, I didn’t. I didn’t even take his licence number. I was so rattled and shaken up at first, and then I—”
The buzzer sounded.
Josephine Dell sighed with exasperation. “I suppose,” she said, controlling herself with difficulty, “that’ll be someone else looking for Myrna Jackson.”
“Your room-mate?” Bertha Cool asked, “I’d really like to meet her.”
“So would lots of people.”
“Where is she?”
“Heaven knows. It wasn’t a very satisfactory arrangement. She was a friend of Mr. Milbers, and he suggested we both might cut expenses by sharing this apartment. I wasn’t very keen about it, but you know how it is when the boss makes a suggestion.
“Well, we tried it. She’s impossible! I left a note for her yesterday saying the rent was up tomorrow, that’s Monday. I told her I was going to be packing up tonight, and when she rang me up today what do you think she said?”
“What?” Bertha asked as the doorbell sounded again.
“Told me that she came up here this afternoon and had already moved out. She only moved in a short time ago, so she didn’t have much stuff, but there’s a five-dollar checking-out charge for cleaning the apartment, and she just didn’t say a word about paying her share of that. I didn’t think about it at the time.”
Josephine Dell went over to the door telephone and said, “Who is it, please?” and then wearily, “No, this is her roommate. I don’t know where she is. She left this afternoon—moved out. That’s right, and I’m moving out myself. No, I can’t see you. I can’t talk with you. I’m packing. I’m undressed, and I’ve got to catch a midnight plane—I don’t care how important it is or who you are. She isn’t here. I don’t know where she is, and I’ve done nothing all evening long but answer the doorbell for people who wanted to see her.”
Josephine Dell slammed down the receiver and came back to stand in the middle of the room, looking things over with a somewhat hopeless air.
“I can’t help wondering about that girl and her relationship with Mr. Milbers,” she said. “Oh, it’s all right as far as that end of it’s concerned, but I have an idea she was snooping on me all the time she was here.
“Two weeks ago my diary disappeared. Then it showed up again, right in its accustomed place, but under some scarfs. As though I’d be sap enough to think I’d overlooked it there! She was the only one who could have taken it. I can imagine a girl of a certain type being interested in reading it on the sly; but why did she take it, and where did she take it?”
“Did you ask her about it?” Bertha inquired.
“No. I decided the damage had been done. I couldn’t actually prove anything, so I decided to keep quiet and move into another apartment—a very small, cramped single. I’m fed up on this double business.
“Well,” she said, changing the subject abruptly, “there’s only one thing to do, and that’s to get this stuff packed somehow or other. I’m sick and tired to death of trying to sort out every blessed thing I want to take. Here it goes.”
She picked up bundles of folded garments and crammed them indiscriminately into the trunk and the cardboard carton. “Can I help?” Bertha Cool asked.
“No,”
“ Josephine Dell said, and then added as an afterthought, “Thank you.” Her voice and manner indicated that Bertha could be of the biggest assistance by getting out and staying out.
“What are you going to do about that will?” Bertha Cool asked. “About giving your testimony on it?”
“Oh, I’ll be available when they need me,” she said. “They say I may have to go down to the tropics. This is different from a week-end trip. I’m supposed to live out of a suitcase. I can’t take a trunk because a lot of my travel will be on a plane. It sounded marvellous when I –”
Bertha Cool, looking Josephine Dell over thoughtfully, interrupted. “There’s one thing you can do for me.”
“What?”
She said, “I want to know something about Harlow Milbers —about how he died.”
“It was very sudden, although he’d been feeling rather poorly for three or four days.”
“Can you tell me something more about his exact symptoms?”
“Why, yes, of course. It started about an hour after he came to the office. He had a terrific headache, and then all of a sudden he became nauseated. I suggested he should lie down on the couch for a while, to see if that wouldn’t make him feel better. I thought he went to sleep for a few minutes; then he had another spell of nausea, and that wakened him. He kept complaining of a terrific burning thirst in his mouth and throat, and I told him we should call a doctor. He said he’d go home and have the doctor come there. Then I called Dr. Clarge and told him Mr. Milbers was very ill and was taking a cab home, asking him to please go there at once to meet the cab when it arrived.”
“Did you ride out with Mr. Milbers?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“He was sick in the cab on the way out. His stomach and intestines were terribly tender. When we got to the house, we had to help him. The cab driver was grinning. He thought the poor man had been staging a celebration.”
“What did you do?”
“I helped him into the house. Mrs. Cranning came out, and she helped, too. Dr. Clarge wasn’t there when we arrived, but he got there within a minute or two—before we had Mr. Milbers in bed.”
“Then what?”
“The doctor stayed about half an hour and left him some medicine. He gave him a hypodermic, and Mr. Milbers felt somewhat better, although he still complained of the burning thirst and said his stomach was very sore and sensitive. He thought he was getting better, and he felt very drowsy.”
“Then what?”
“Dr. Clarge came back about four o’clock in the afternoon. He gave him another hypodermic, and said he thought Mr. Milbers should either have a nurse, or go to the hospital that night in case he wasn’t better. He left more medicine with some instructions and said he’d drop in the next morning at about eight o’clock.”
“Then what?”
“About twenty minutes after Dr. Clarge had left, Mr. Milbers passed away.”
“Who was in the room at the time? Were you?”
“No. Mrs. Cranning was there. I’d gone downstairs for a glass of milk and a sandwich. I’d been so upset I hadn’t eaten anything. We really thought Mr. Milbers was going to get along all right.”
“What happened after he died? Did you notify Dr. Clarge?”
“Yes. Dr. Clarge came out, but said there was nothing he could do. He called the undertaker, and said we should notify Christopher Milbers. I sent him the telegram.”
“And then?”
“Well, what with the excitement and all of the things that had to be done, it was late when I left and
then I had to go to the office to close the safe, and naturally I was pretty much upset. That’s why I walked into that automobile, I guess. I don’t eat breakfast, only a cup of black coffee, and that glass of milk and a sandwich was all I’d eaten all day. I hadn’t even finished the sandwich because Mrs. Cranning had called me just as I was halfway through eating it.”
“What did the doctor say caused his death?”
“Oh, you know how those doctors arc. They roll a lot of medical terms out and look wise. Personally, I don’t think Dr. Clarge knew a thing about it. I can’t remember all of the words he used. I remember one of them. He said it was a gastroenteric disturbance, and that it resulted from something or other in the liver, and something or other that ended with an ‘itis.’ ”
“Nephritis?” Bertha asked.
“I don’t know. That sounds something like it. But he said the primary cause of death was a gastroenteric disturbance. I remember that much. The rest of it was a lot of mumbo-jumbo about things that didn’t make sense to me, and I don’t think they made sense to him.”
“Where did Mr. Milbers eat breakfast?” Bertha asked.
Josephine Dell looked at her in surprise. “Why at his, house, of course—that is, I suppose that’s where he ate. That’s why he had Nettie Cranning and Eva—and if you ask me,” she blurted, “with all the service he was paying for, he should have been waited on hand and foot, in place of which he had to wait for his meals lots of times. However, it’s no skin off my nose, and it’s all over with now. But it makes me sick to think of his leaving almost everything to them.”
“And ten thousand to you,” Bertha Cool said.
“If he was going to leave most of his estate outside of the family,” Josephine Dell said firmly, “I’m entitled to ten thousand.”
“How long had you been with him?”
“Almost two years.”
“That’s five thousand a year.”
“That’s right,” Josephine Dell said with sudden cold, biting rage. “That’s five thousand a year. Very generous compensation, isn’t it, Mrs. Cool? Well, you don’t know everything, and don’t ever kid yourself that –
“Oh, well, what’s the use?
Bats Fly at Dusk Page 10