Death for Dear Clara

by Q. Patrick

  “Perhaps you’ll give me some details.”

  “Well, I—I thought there might be someone there, watching, so I used the stairs instead of the elevator. I persuaded a chambermaid to show me Mr. Tolfrey’s room. And—and when he didn’t answer my knock, I got her to open the door with her key.”

  “You must have a way with chambermaids, Miss Price. And did Mr. Tolfrey give you a royal welcome?”

  The girl’s nostrils crinkled distastefully. “He was lying on the floor—drunk.”

  “How shocking, Miss Price. Did you try to revive him?”

  “Of course not. I left at once.” The girl shrugged. “By the way, as I was going out of the hotel, I saw Mr. Bristol.”

  “Bristol?”

  “One of the clients of the Advice Bureau who went to see Mrs. Van Heuten this afternoon.” Madeleine’s tone had a frankness which Timothy suspected. “He—he seemed in a kind of daze. He had a paper in his hand and he said he’d just read about Mrs. Van Heuten’s death. He was going to see Tolfrey to ask whether it was true.”

  Robert Bristol going to see Dane Tolfrey! Now every one of the eight visitors had linked themselves to Dane Tolfrey—everyone except the anonymous girl with the green eyes.

  “And you enlightened Mr. Bristol?” asked Timothy.

  “I just said Mr. Tolfrey was in no condition to tell anyone anything. Then I …”

  Madeleine broke off abruptly as the telephone jangled. With a swift, relieved “Excuse me,” she hurried to answer it.

  Timothy watched her lift the receiver, watched her hand abstractedly pat a strand of dark hair into place.

  “Yes. This is Madeleine Price. Who is it?”

  Her voice was impersonal—as composed as that erect figure. For a moment she listened intently to what to Timothy was nothing but a series of unrecognizable croaks from the other end of the wire. Then, suddenly, she swayed. A tiny gasp slipped from between her lips. The receiver fell from her fingers and swung precariously on its cord.

  With what seemed like almost deliberate slowness, Mrs. Van Heuten’s controlled and superbly unemotional secretary crumpled in a heap on the floor.

  It had been startling enough when the fragile Mrs. Hobart had fainted at Mrs. Van Heuten’s cocktail party. The collapse of Madeleine Price was almost incredible.

  Timothy’s first instinct was to grasp the telephone and shout down it. But the person at the other end—whoever it had been—had hung up.

  Frantically, he told the operator to trace the call. Then he lifted Madeleine and carried her to a sofa. Finding water in the kitchen, he forced it between her clenched teeth and sprinkled some on her face. At length the eyelids fluttered and she gazed up at him from glazed, uncertain eyes.

  “What—what is it?”

  “Don’t be distressed, Miss Price.” Timothy was smiling slightly. “You’re still in your own apartment—with nobody more alarming than a policeman.”

  Dazedly the girl pushed herself into a sitting position. Her eyes moved to the telephone and rested there as though hypnotized.

  “That call!” she whispered. “I remember now.”

  “And who made the night so particularly hideous?”

  Madeleine gripped his arm impulsively. “It—it was the murderer of Mrs. Van Heuten!”

  “Is that the efficient secretary in you speaking—or the amateur detective?” asked Timothy quietly.

  The girl did not seem to hear him. Her hand slipped from his arm and moved slowly to her throat.

  “I couldn’t tell from the voice,” she breathed. “Not whether it was a man or a woman. It was muffled, beastly.”

  “It must have said something quite unusual to frighten so poised a person as yourself, Miss Price.”

  Madeleine shivered. “It said—You’d better not tell the police about the person that went in through the back entrance this afternoon. I don’t want to have to murder another woman.”

  “How very cryptic,” said Timothy drily.

  “You don’t believe me.” Madeleine’s eyes blazed. “You think—think I made it all up. You never believe what I say. Well, it’s true. I swear it’s true.”

  “My dear Miss Price, I make a habit of believing all that’s told me.”

  “Then—then what are you going to do?”

  “You have been threatened. As a policeman, I shall see that you are adequately protected in the future.”

  For a moment they sat together in silence. Madeleine was twisting her fingers together nervously. Timothy seemed lost in thought.

  At length he said: “You’ve had a hard day, Miss Price, and I have a very soft heart. After this bomb-shell, I won’t worry you with any more embarrassing questions about your visit to Mr. Tolfrey.”

  He rose. Madeleine did, too, She moved impulsively toward him.

  “You’re being very kind,” she faltered. “And what you said just now isn’t true. I—I am rather frightened of you.”

  “Don’t let that worry you, Miss Price,” said Timothy solemnly. “That’s just the first phase in our emotional relationship.”

  As he spoke, the telephone rang once more. Madeleine started. Timothy hurried to answer it.

  “The police wished a call traced.”

  “Yes, yes,” said Timothy impatiently.

  “It was made from a pay booth in the Times Square neighborhood.”

  “Okay.”

  Timothy put down the receiver and turned to Madeleine.

  “A pay booth in the Times Square neighborhood, Miss Price. Your threatener is very conventional in his choice of locale.”

  At the door, he paused and added very seriously:

  “I don’t have to tell you to be careful, do I? If you didn’t kill Mrs. Van Heuten yourself, that probably was the murderer who called just now. And if he felt it necessary to threaten you, that shows he was frightened. And a frightened murderer, Miss Price, is more dangerous than a policeman. Goodnight.”

  XI

  On his return home, Timothy called headquarters to send a detective to watch Miss Price’s apartment house. Then he went to bed.

  He had planned to read through the manuscripts he had acquired during the course of the evening. But he was too exhausted. They would have to wait until tomorrow.

  As he relaxed between the sheets, he reviewed in his mind the many and unaccountable events of the past few hours. Something, he was certain now, connected all of Mrs. Van Heuten’s nine visitors together. But what it was, he had not the slightest idea. Those of the visitors he had already interviewed had produced literary manuscripts and had been able to give a plausible account of their business with Mrs. Van Heuten. But he did not believe them—not any of them. If only, he reflected, there was someone in the case who could be relied on to tell even a modicum of truth.

  In particular, he wished that Madeleine Price was not so obvious and shameless a liar; he wished he could believe in the actuality of that threat over the telephone. If Madeleine Price had reported it correctly, it would at least be something definite to work on. It indicated that the murderer was desperately eager to keep the police from finding out about “the person who went in through the back door.” That person could not be the murderer himself. He must have realized that Madeleine Price had not seen his own entry. The murderer was probably referring to Tolfrey’s visit. In other words, he was terrified that Tolfrey and the police might get together.

  There again, Timothy had not the slightest idea why. But, connecting the murderer as it did with the back door, it would seem to help eliminate the Princess and her friends who had come in through the front way. It also—however one looked at it—eliminated Dane Tolfrey who, as Timothy knew only too well, had been far too drunk to do any telephoning at the time of the call.

  Dane Tolfrey, the most suspicious of the nine visitors, it would appear, was the only one of them who could be considered innocent.

  All that seemed incontrovertible—if only Timothy could believe in the telephone call.…

  With a despair
ing grunt, Timothy gave it up. Before he fell asleep he let his mind roam to another far more intriguing problem—the mystery of Susan Hobart’s naive attempt at bribery.

  What on earth had prompted that unaccountable girl to offer him a blank check? What did she know or suspect that could make her take so great a risk?

  Next morning, Timothy was up early. After sleep, his mind was very active again. And he was pleased with himself. Odd memories have a habit of slipping into the conscious mind during the night and one of them had come to Timothy. Robert Bristol; he remembered now why the name of Mrs. Van Heuten’s second visitor had seemed familiar. At the tender age of six or possibly seven Timothy had sailed toy boats in Central Park with a Bobby Bristol—a grubby, intense little boy who had never been able to keep his expensive sailor pants clean. Although Timothy had had no active association with Robert Bristol since the boat-sailing era, he had a vague recollection of the boy’s subsequent career. His parents had been very rich, the Bristols. Only recently, he remembered, the Bristol fortune had crashed, Bobby’s father had committed suicide and Bobby had been left as the last and very indigent member of the old Bristol clan. Timothy remembered recognizing the boy’s picture in the paper at the time of the tragedy.

  There was just a chance that his Bobby Bristol was Mrs. Van Heuten’s Robert Bristol. If so, he might at last find one of the visitors who could give him a straight answer.

  Timothy decided to call on Mrs. Van Heuten’s second visitor before going to the Homicide Bureau. Sergeant Danvers had taken his address as a matter of routine from Miss Price the day before.

  It was barely eight when the taxi dropped Timothy outside a nondescript house, grudgingly converted into apartments. He pressed a button marked “Mr. and Mrs. Bristol” and eventually found his way to the third floor.

  A door was opened to him by a pale, untidy young man in an old bathrobe. His eyes were bright, over-excited. His fingers pushed at the blond hair which straggled over his forehead.

  “What do you want?”

  Timothy recognized him immediately. Despite a certain haggardness Robert Bristol was still amazingly like the grubby little boy who had been unable to keep his expensive sailor suits clean.

  “You’re Bobby Bristol,” he said. “Guess you don’t remember me. Last time we met I put a tadpole down your back. My name’s Timothy Trant.”

  “Trant?” The young man gazed at him with slow recognition. “Oh, yes. Of course I remember.” His voice was abrupt, jerky, as though he were under some acute nervous strain. “Come in.”

  Timothy followed him through a small hall into an incredibly untidy living-room. Manuscripts were strewn at random over tables piled indiscriminately with dirty dishes, clumsily opened cans, carelessly stubbed cigarette ends and glasses. Various articles of clothing lay limply on the floor.

  Timothy mentally wondered about the domestic virtues of the girl his boyhood friend had married.

  “Excuse the mess.” Bobby Bristol pulled a shirt and some socks from a chair. “I don’t seem very good at keeping a place clean.”

  “Isn’t there anyone to fix things up for you?”

  “No.” Bristol’s laugh was short. “Not any more. But what on earth are you doing here, Trant—coming in out of the blue after twenty years?”

  Timothy sat down on the chair recently evacuated by the shirt and socks. “Since we last met, Bobby, my career has been one steady decline. First Kent, then Princeton, and now the Homicide Bureau.”

  “The Homicide Bureau!” Robert Bristol had been pacing restlessly up and down the room, now he stopped dead, gazing at Timothy. “You mean you’ve come here to talk to me about—about Clara?”

  “Good guess.”

  The hands that clutched the cord of the bathrobe started to tremble. Bristol stared at them for a moment as though they belonged to someone else. Then he burst into a sudden, near hysterical laugh.

  “God, that’s funny. That’s—that’s just about the funniest thing left to happen.”

  Timothy was a little surprised at this complete loss of control—a little disappointed, too. He had been hoping to find someone very normal and matter-of-fact. Obviously, this drawn, pale young man was on the verge of a breakdown.

  “And what’s so funny about it?” he asked quietly.

  “You—you coming here to talk about Mrs. Van Heuten.” Robert Bristol’s shoulders were still shaking with unmanageable laughter. “After all that’s happened—a policeman coming to cross-examine me about Clara’s murder. That’s …” He broke off suddenly, shaking his head as though he had come out of a dream. He flushed. “Sorry,” he murmured. “Haven’t been sleeping so well lately. I guess I’m a bit on edge.”

  Timothy’s eyes were intent on the other man’s face. “At the risk of presuming on an old acquaintance,” he said, “I’d like to know what you mean by—all that’s happened?”

  “That’s easy.” Bristol perched himself on the table, pulled a cigarette from under a pile of papers and lit it. His tone was defiantly self-mocking. “I am a man of many woes, Trant. Despite great expectations, I’ve hardly a cent to my name. My wife’s left me and wants a divorce so that she can marry a—a more promising husband. My latest novel has been politely and firmly turned down by Salter’s. And Mrs. Van Heuten, who was my only friend left in New York, has been killed.” He laughed rather savagely. “Which is putting it in a nutshell.”

  “Too bad, Bobby,” said Timothy.

  “Oh, I wasn’t angling for sympathy.” Bristol gestured impatiently with his cigarette. “I just told you as—as an old friend. As a policeman you’d better start asking me questions.” He pressed the cigarette out against the side of an empty soup can. “Mrs. Van Heuten happened to be a very good friend of mine,” he added softly, “and I think I’d do almost anything in this world to find out who murdered her.”

  “That’s exactly what I hoped,” said Timothy briskly. “I’ve interviewed several people who saw Mrs. Van Heuten, Bobby, and they’re as phoney as hell. I want the real dope about her. What sort of a woman was she? What exactly was her Literary Advice Bureau?”

  Bristol answered his questions eagerly and intelligently. But if Timothy had been hoping for startling revelations, he was disappointed. Bobby stated emphatically that Mrs. Van Heuten had been a very good friend of his mother’s, that she had been extremely kind to him during his financial difficulties and that she had been flawlessly respectable. The Literary Advice Bureau had been one hundred per cent genuine and dozens of society dilettantes had taken their work to her for criticism. A novelist himself, he claimed that Mrs. Van Heuten had done a great deal for him. She had even helped to get his first novel published by Salter’s. He had not heard the slightest word to hint that anything had been wrong either with the Advice Bureau or with its founder.

  He checked with what Madeleine Price had said, that he himself had left the Advice Bureau about two hours before the murder was discovered. He had come and gone by the front entrance. Mrs. Van Heuten had made no mention of a back door. Nor had she said anything about her will although he presumed her money would go to her relatives all of whom lived in Boston. He could think of no possible motive for her death.

  Yes. He knew Tolfrey as Mrs. Van Heuten’s friend. In fact, as soon as he read about her death in the papers, he had started off to see Tolfrey to find out if it were really true. He confirmed Madeleine’s story of their meeting outside the Regina. Miss Price had seemed very pale. He also told Timothy that he had seen Tolfrey in a restaurant where he had lunch with his wife on the morning of the murder. Tolfrey had looked rather the worse for wear, he said. There was a mark on his chin as though he’d been in some sort of a brawl.

  “A brawl,” broke in Timothy sharply. “I suppose Tolfrey didn’t mention a John Smith?”

  “John Smith? No.” Bobby shook his head. “All he did was to try to hold me up for a lunch. He’s always broke—broker than I.”

  Tolfrey broke! That was another complication. How did a broke To
lfrey contrive to live in the expensive Regina?

  “Well, Bobby,” said Timothy, “you’ve put me back to where I started. Mrs. Van Heuten was absolutely respectable and no one could have wanted to murder her. When you saw her, did she drop any hint about being worried or frightened?”

  Bobby shrugged. “Afraid I didn’t give her a chance. I was too busy pouring out my own woes about—about Helen. That’s all I seem good for these days.”

  “She was sympathetic?”

  “Very. I expect she was bored to tears, but she didn’t show it. Told me not to take Life and my wife too seriously.” He laughed rather bitterly. “Excellent advice, if you can take it. She even called up and tried to put in a word for my book. Not that it did any good. She concluded by suggesting I spruce up a bit to make myself more presentable for the inevitable jobhunting.”

  Timothy glanced from the old bathrobe to a suit lying forlornly across a chair back. “Not such a bad idea,” he murmured.

  “The electric light bill comes first.” Bobby smiled ironically. “I can live without pressed pants. But I need light to write, because—strange as it seems—I intend to go on writing despite the world’s obvious lack of interest.”

  “Perhaps,” said Timothy after a moment’s pause, “you’d let me look at your novel. The—”

  “The one Salter’s turned down? Sure, take it along.” Bobby grabbed up a pile of manuscript and handed it to him. “Quite unusual to have anyone asking for one of my stories.”

  Timothy tidied the bundle and put it under his arm. “And you’re starting a new one?”

  “Yes. It’s very Russian and morbid—the writhings of a tortured soul. I’d let you see that too but I write my first thoughts in shorthand. Quite indecipherable.” Bristol fumbled for another cigarette and lit it uncertainly. “If this were only a garret and if I were only a genius, I’d be the model starving genius.”

  Timothy rose.

  “Well, Bobby, I think that closes the first chapter of the inquisition. I’m darn sorry about the—the complications. If—”

  He put a hand in his pocket for his wallet but drew it out again when he saw the sudden flush stain Bobby’s cheeks.