“No. I live here.” Shere gestured at the door across the hall. Nelsing nodded; it was obvious that he had checked on the other occupants of the rooming-house.
“But you were friends?” he added.
“Well—call it that.” He stood still in the dim passageway, his eyes intent, his strongly built body emanating his usual vitality. “We were neighbors, but sometimes days ’ud go by without our seeing each other.”
“How many days has it been this time?”
“Two or three.” He eyed Nelsing again, narrowly. “You said a routine check-up? —I just heard about his death, I’ve been out since seven this morning, and I didn’t see a paper until half an hour ago. It said he’d dropped dead…”
Nelsing waited a moment. Todd, motionless and silent in the shadows of the hall, heard the wind rustling the dry plant-spears outside the house; and heard also a nearer sound of quick and shallow breathing from the blond young man who faced them.
“There was more to it than that, Mr. Shere,” Nelsing said. “Since you knew Hartlein, perhaps you could help us. His death wasn’t natural.”
“Suicide,” Shere said very quickly, and with no questioning inflection.
“You sound almost as if you’d expected it, Mr. Shere. When you last saw Hartlein did he seem in a suicidal frame of mind?”
David Shere retreated farther into wariness. “I don’t know. I wouldn’t know what that was.”
“Had he suffered any recent shock or great disappointment, would you happen to know?”
“No,” Shere almost shouted. “Why should I know? We weren’t on those terms.”
Nelsing nodded again. “I think I’d like to talk this over with you further, if you can spare an hour. Perhaps you’d come up to my office; I have the car outside.”
“I’ll go on home, Nelse,” Todd said in an undertone, and as unobtrusively as possible slipped through the door, followed by Nelsing’s significant “See you later, then.”
There was a streetcar coming, but Todd did not run for it. He strolled unhurriedly to the corner and stood at ease, waiting for another. There, presently, he was rewarded by the sight of Shere going by in Nelsing’s car, his ruddy young face a very mask of stubbornness.
Todd’s eyes followed the car. He reflected on Shere’s overtures to Cass Johnson, and their rebuff; on the presence of cyanides in a metallurgical laboratory; and on the palpable fact that whether or not Shere had been surprised at the unnatural aspects of his neighbor’s death, he was a troubled and frightened young man who was rapidly becoming more so.
The past week had been a placid one in the McKinnon household, except for struggles with literary creation. Georgine didn’t mind the typewriter, but she did mind the mouth-organ playing which was Todd’s device for releasing a plot from his mind. He was practising part of Beethoven’s First Symphony, and doing badly at it.
—If only I could help, if I could just help him somehow, she told herself over and over during the week. There wasn’t much chance for that, though; her daughter Barby was coming home for the Armistice Day week-end, and domestic details went on inexorably and soothingly. They were still going on when, on the morning of the 11th, the call from Nelsing summoned Todd to the Hall of Justice.
Georgine heard his brief account of what had happened, saw him off, and returned in a kind of daze to the kitchen where she and Barby were making cookies. She moved irresolutely about, picking up things and forgetting to put them down, listening with only a fragment of attention to Barby’s unceasing chatter: the school play, the hope of a swimming pool some day if the money could be raised—
Hugh Hartlein was dead, ten days after he had thrust himself into the McKinnons’ lives and talked about the Hand of God. Nobody had yet told her how he died, but it was obvious that something was very wrong about it.
—And we’re in it, Georgine thought with a sinking heart. —We were in it from the moment when Hartlein looked in our window. Todd didn’t ask for it, and I’ve been reluctant at every step. It’s been laid on us. Well, then—I wonder if there’s any use fighting? Maybe that just makes it worse, as if we were a conquered people and invaders had been billeted in this house…
“And maybe that’s what I can do to help Todd,” she said half-aloud. “Relax, and let ’em all come.”
“Let who come, Mamma?” Barby inquired without much interest, preparing to leave.
“Oh, anybody,” said Georgine vaguely. “Be back in time for lunch, won’t you, darling?”
Half an hour later, talking on the telephone to Nelsing, she was still in this queer passive mood. Have the Johnsons up for the day? Nelsing wouldn’t ask her that if the girls were suspects in—anything. Perhaps this wasn’t even a murder; and Nelsing did Todd so many professional favors—
“Let ’em all come,” she said almost blithely into the telephone, startling the Inspector into a moment of silence.
Even if one relaxed, she thought as she waited for the guests, there was a social problem involved. With what degree of sympathy should one treat the widow of a young man whose marriage had never been consummated and was about to be dissolved—if indeed it hadn’t been already? The Victorians would have known, adepts that they were in exact shades of mourning; Georgine did not, and doubted that Emily Post herself had ever covered the situation, including as it did an interrogation by the police. She had also some difficulty in explaining it to Barby, who came plunging in after making plans for the afternoon with a friend.
“I guess it’s one of Toddy’s murders,” said Barby with great sang-froid.
“No, no, I don’t think so—and for heaven’s sake don’t mention the word! Could you tuck that shirt inside your jeans, darling? I see them coming—”
Her first sight of the Johnson girls, however, confirmed her judgment about Hartlein’s death. Cass was red-eyed and obviously tense under a matter-of-fact manner, all of which seemed fairly natural; but Ryn wore a curious expression, withdrawn and inward-looking, like someone trying to evaluate the first faint twinges of an ominous pain. They’re scared, Georgine told herself. But why should Ryn be scared?
Georgine found herself taking on the brisk and bustling air of a good nurse. The girls would want to freshen up, perhaps; Barby could show them the bathroom, and take them—(“Is your bed made?” in an urgent whisper) take them into her room where there was a good mirror. There would be coffee when they came down, and Georgine would get lunch started. Oh, yes, they must plan on it, there was no telling when Nelse would arrive.
She hastily put noodles on to boil, listening to the murmur of voices from Barby’s room above. Her child had improved socially, too, at school; she’d lost some of her polite reserve and was more out-going… There was a can of shrimp somewhere in the emergency cupboard. There ought to be asparagus, yes, there it was, and where on earth had she put the mousetrap cheese? If Todd and Barby had eaten it all—!
Presently the voices ceased, and the two young women came downstairs, followed by Barby. There was something odd about Barby’s gait, and she kept her eyes fixed on the elegant back of Ryn Johnson; evidently she was trying on that gliding walk in view of future theatrical performances. Georgine glanced at her daughter’s face with some curiosity; it was cheerful enough but showed no signs of the inner radiance that appeared in the presence of someone she liked very much.
Cass stopped by the telephone at the foot of the stairs. “May I?” she said, and put in a call. She talked in a low voice for a few minutes, and on rejoining the others said to her sister, “Nelsing is going to call on Chloe before he comes here. They’re waiting for him now.” Ryn made no response. She kept her eyes fixed on her coffee-cup. Cass added, with a faint smile, “I’d be willing to bet he won’t get much change out of her.” She looked at Barby, and the smile became one of fondness. “Tell us some more about your school, honey. It must be such fun!”
Barby talked. She talked all through lunch. It had been a long time since she had had three such grateful listeners. Nobody menti
oned the name of Hugh Hartlein.
***
Inspector Nelsing arrived a little after two o’clock, and Georgine withdrew to the kitchen. For a short time he talked to Cass and Ryn together in the living-room; then the swing-door flashed and Ryn appeared alone, to sink without ceremony into one of the kitchen chairs. She laid her hand flat upon the table-top and massaged its enamel with a slow nervous sweep of her palm. “It’s just awful,” she said just above a whisper, her green-gray eyes focused on a point beyond Georgine. “Poor Cass, my poor darling, if only it needn’t have happened to her! She can’t bear to think it’s suicide because she’s afraid that might somehow have been her fault; and she said—before she took time to think—that someone must have murdered him.”
“It couldn’t have been an accident?”
Ryn looked full at her, with an odd shine in her eyes. “You don’t know about the inhaler?”
When she had finished, Georgine sat silent and appalled. “But,” she said finally, “it’s so elaborate—who could—I mean, anyone who wants to kill himself usually takes sleeping tablets, or jumps off the Golden Gate Bridge. This isn’t—”
Ryn nodded. “That’s it. But you think of—the other things, and you can’t imagine who—”
From the living-room came the sound of Cass’s voice crying out, “No, no! That can’t be right—” and then Nelsing’s, firm and quiet but unintelligible.
“What’s he doing to her?” said Ryn in a sort of wail.
“Was he tough?”
“Oh, no, no. Just horribly polite, you know, but— frightening. I know he thinks we’re lying.”
“That’s Nelse for you. He’d suspect his own mother of evading, just because she was a woman.”
“But with us—it seems the Godfrey got at him and told some absurd story about having seen Cass go down to Hugh’s rooming-house stealthily, at night, and quarreling—it’s one of her crazy dreams, of course Cass did nothing of the kind, but Nelse doesn’t seem sure at all. If he believes anything the Godfrey tells him he’s sunk from the start!”
“Dear me! But even if Miss Godfrey were right, surely—”
“Well, she’s not. I’d swear it. Nelse said she couldn’t be certain it was Cass, and he looked at me as if it might have been I who—”
“Even then,” said Georgine, “what would that have to do with his death last night?”
Ryn sighed, pressed her palms together hard, and said in a low voice, “Don’t you see? That inhaler thing could have been planted on him any time. —Good Lord, what am I talking about? As if Cass of all people—”
A familiar head moved past the kitchen window, and in a moment Todd came in the back door. He greeted Ryn, laid a hand lightly on Georgine’s shoulder, and glanced toward the swing-door. “Nelse still at it?” he asked.
“Yes. Did you have lunch, Todd?”
“I did, thank you, but I’ll have a few of those cookies.” The plate from luncheon was still on the table, and he helped himself.
“May I, too?” said Ryn. “They’re awfully good, and this affair seems to be affecting me disgracefully—I’m hungry still, even after I ate two helps of everything at lunch. So greedy of me.” She smiled suddenly and beautifully.
“I’m afraid your poor sister is really upset, though,” said Georgine. “She didn’t touch a thing but coffee and fruit. I began to wonder if I had you mixed up, because she said something about your having, uh, digestive trouble.”
Ryn’s green eyes went at once brilliant and blank. “Cass does exaggerate so; she worries about me as if she were my mother. Once in a while I do have an upset, but not today— and your food tasted especially—oh, listen; I think they must be through in there.”
“Ryn,” said Cass Johnson, arriving unceremoniously through the door, “come in here, there’s something terribly awkward that I hadn’t known a thing about.” Her round pretty face looked almost haggard under the smoothly upswept hair. She glanced around at Georgine and Todd. “It’s terrible to keep you out of your own living-room. Nelse won’t mind, he’ll explain.”
Nelsing looked up with a sardonic gleam as the party filed in. “Can’t keep you out of it, can I, Mac?” he murmured. “Well, it’s up to Cass… It seems she’s the beneficiary of some of Hartlein’s insurance.”
“But what’s wrong with that?” Ryn said in soft bewilderment. “I don’t see—when was it taken out?”
“Just before the, uh, trip to Reno,” Nelsing said. “Probably as soon as she’d agreed to marry him. Of course the fact that she let him down immediately after the ceremony didn’t affect the policy’s validity, he’d paid a year’s premiums in advance. He could have had the beneficiary changed, but I take it he hoped to make Cass change her mind again.”
“He did, Nelse,” Ryn put in. “He was always at her, but she never gave him any hope, we told you that! Still I don’t see— that policy can’t still be good? He hadn’t paid on it again, had he? Because that was—let’s see, over thirteen months ago.”
Nelsing stretched his handsome length in the blue chair and nodded. “In the ordinary course of events, it would be valid for a while more; that is, if Cass wanted to pay up a few back premiums, she could get the five thousand dollars. That’s in a clause in fine print, the sort of thing most people don’t read on their policies. There’s a nice question here, though; if Hartlein died by his own hand, the policy’s automatically canceled by the usual two-year clause.”
“And I kept insisting,” Cass broke out, “that Hugh couldn’t have! I swear I didn’t know about the policy’s still being good, I didn’t even know it was still made out to me—but I talk and talk, and now it sounds as if I wanted the money, and were just trying to make out that he didn’t kill himself so that I’d be sure to get it.”
“But why shouldn’t you take it, dear? That is, if it’s coming to you at all. We both accepted our share of poor Bell’s estate, she wanted us to have it. Why is this different?” Ryn looked around appealingly at the silent McKinnons. “It wouldn’t count as defrauding an insurance company, would it? —Or look, Cass, if you feel truly uncomfortable about it, you could pay up the back premiums and then not take the money, give it away.”
“Then who’d get it?”
“Mrs. Hartlein, I suppose,” Ryn said, suddenly doubtful. “But isn’t she provided for somehow?”
Nelsing cleared his throat. “Hartlein’s mother benefits from a much larger policy, taken out eighteen months ago. He seems to have been a most dutiful son, because he stinted himself on clothes and lodgings to pay for that. It still raises that nice question, though.” He got to his feet. “Was his death suicide or murder? You both knew him well, you can’t seem to make up your minds about it.” He stood looking down at the two Johnsons, unsmiling. “If it was suicide, one or the other of you might be able to figure out the reason. If it was murder, there may be a few things you’re not telling; but until we know if it was, naturally I can’t put any pressure on you. Thanks for as much as you’ve been willing to tell.”
Cass gave a sudden and forlorn little laugh. “I wish this were ten years ago, Howard Nelsing, and it were Friday night at the house, and you calling up to ask for a date! Well—I suppose you’ve tried to be nice.”
Nelsing, about to leave, turned. “I can’t ever be what you call nice, in the face of lies. Can’t you see that, Cass? And if there’s nothing on your mind, why have both you girls been lying off and on? Good-bye, Georgine and Mac. Thanks a lot for taking us in.”
A moment after he had disappeared, the Johnsons also left. Cass remarked wearily that if the reporters were still haunting their street they might as well run the gauntlet now. Todd saw them to their car, returned and repaired straight to the kitchen where he found some beer.
“And do you know what struck me as a li’le odder than anything?” he said half an hour later, at the end of their fruitless if fascinated discussion. “There was one way to dispose of that insurance money that didn’t occur to either of the Johnsons.”
“Yes,” said Georgine. “Not to pay up the premiums—and not to get the money at all.”
***
The inquiry into the death of Hugh Hartlein sank quietly beneath the surface of published news, and went on without causing so much as a ripple to show its direction. It had never been Nelsing’s habit to confide the progress of his work to anyone outside his office, but on other occasions Todd McKinnon had been able at least to chart his general progress through news releases. This time there was nothing. Todd tortured the memory of Beethoven, and worked grimly at a story whose real basis had “gone out from under him,” as he told his wife. He’d have to finish it now, but it didn’t have the true ring.
Georgine asked how he’d worked it out. “I had Hartlein as the Policeman’s Li’le Helper before the fact,” Todd said, “going to the law with suspicions that couldn’t be proved or disproved, laying the groundwork for a crime of his own. It’s been used before, but it’s not a bad gimmick. And now, damn it, he goes and gets himself bumped off—just to spite me, no doubt. I have to switch him from murderer to victim, and the whole yarn was slanted the other way.”
“You have some suspects, all set up,” said Georgine thoughtfully. “A next-door neighbor who regards the victim as an obstacle in his love-life, and who could easily have fixed up that horrible gadget and left it on his desk—I suppose it couldn’t have been sent by mail, Todd, as a sample or something?”
“Could be,” Todd ruminated aloud, “but I doubt it. What’s to keep the victim from taking a good sniff of it as soon as the package is opened, and dying on the spot, leaving the wrappings for the police? Seems a lot more likely that somebody just put the inhaler in his pocket. Well, you’re right—we have the Damn Fool, who acts nervous and guilty and loses his temper when he’s interrogated, and who works in a laboratory where there’s cyanide to burn. There’s a Repeater for Ritual Reasons—”
“An old lady, I suppose, who’s the head of a mysterious cult?”
The Smiling Tiger Page 6