The Murder of a Fifth Columnist

by Leslie Ford

  I looked at my watch. It was already two o’clock. “If I can get you up to Sylvia Peele’s,” I said.

  “She was here, wasn’t she?”

  I nodded.

  “She’s nice. She said I mustn’t be upset—nothing is ever so awful if you can go to sleep and forget it a while.—What’s the matter with her? Who’s Pete? Why did she call him up and tell him about… what happened? And why did she say he had to get to Corliss’s room before the police got there?”

  I was too appalled at that to think coherently.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But forget it, darling—please. And don’t let anybody else know you heard that, will you? Promise?”

  She nodded slowly. Then she said, “Why?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “But do. And finish your milk while I phone.”

  I got Sylvia’s apartment again. Her voice was so dead and colorless that I hardly recognized it.

  “Yes, Grace—what is it now? I can’t stand much more tonight, darling, but go on.”

  “It’s Barbara,” I said. “She is here. She’s coming up. Can you leave the door open so she doesn’t have to go through your apartment? What’s the room number?”

  “639 E,” she said quickly. “Tell her just to go in as if she lived there—not to bring her bag. I’ll give her a toothbrush. It’s the third brown door on the left of the elevator.”

  I put down the phone. It flashed through my mind that this was the most utter and total nonsense—two grown and presumably intelligent women smuggling an eighteen-year-old girl in and out of apartments in Washington’s most exclusive residential hotel like something out of a third-rate movie. It just didn’t make any possible sense.

  She was standing there with her hat in her hand, her eyes opened very wide.

  “Do you suppose it’s the same thing they’re worried about at school?” she asked. I must have looked blank, because she went on quickly, “I mean, they always say, ‘No, there’s no Elizabeth Sherwood here,’ when anybody calls me up, as if they were afraid somebody was trying to kidnap me. They don’t do it for anybody else except a girl whose father is trying to get her away from her grandmother.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. The almost hostile reception I’d got earlier in the evening came back into my mind. “I don’t know, really. Leave your bags here.”

  I told her what Sylvia had said. She nodded.

  “Wait till I see if the coast is clear—then go down the hall.”

  I explained how she could get to the other side of the building and up to Sylvia’s apartment. Then I went out into the foyer, unbolted the door and opened it.

  “Oh,” I said.

  Sergeant Phineas T. Buck was standing there.

  I said, “Oh,” again, blankly.

  He gave me a fishy-eyed stare. “Is something off color, ma’am?”

  “Oh no, Sergeant,” I said. “Nothing at all. I was looking to see if the milk had come. Is there anything I can do for you? Or are you just waiting around?”

  “Colonel’s orders, ma’am,” he said. He spoke as usual out of the corner of his iron-rimmed mouth, so that it sounded as if the firing squad was cleaning its guns just around the corner. “I got to look out for you—see you don’t get into no trouble.”

  That Sergeant Buck would have preferred a week in the guardhouse was only too painfully clear.

  “Well, good luck,” I said. “And good-night. I’m going to bed.”

  He didn’t say “Oh, yeah?” nor did he expectorate over his shoulder… but both were definitely implied.

  “No offense meant, ma’am,” he said.

  “And none taken, Sergeant,” I replied sweetly.

  That was the form we’d established to wipe the slate clean of personal animosity, which is just as well, because there’s a limited amount of slate in the world.

  I closed the door, bolted it firmly and went back. “You’ll have to stay here tonight,” I said. I picked up the phone and called Sylvia once more.

  “She can’t come, dear,” I said. “The Iron Guard’s taken over the Palace.”

  If I thought I was being funny I was wrong. When I opened the door to get the paper next morning, there he was—still or again, it didn’t matter much. Though I saw immediately that it was again, because he was dressed in the black suit I’d never seen except when he went with the Colonel to a military funeral or to the White House. His lank undistinguished hair that I’d never noticed particularly before was plastered down across his iron dome like the pictures of saloon keepers in the gay Nineties, and he had his gold nugget stickpin in his black tie. I was sure that nothing short of a field marshal had died.

  He handed me my papers.

  “Good morning, ma’am,” he said, as bleakly as if the snow was up to the rooftrees.

  “Good morning, Sergeant,” I said. I went back to the phone and ordered breakfast.

  “Service for how many, madam?” room service inquired. It was reasonable enough, since I’d never ordered cereal and bacon and eggs and milk and buttered toast before.

  “One,” I said.

  It was very awkward, and probably very futile. As soon as the maid came to clean the room Sergeant Buck would know Barbara was there. Still, he didn’t know now, and as it might be a morning funeral there was no use crossing that bridge till I came to it.

  I sat down to look at the papers. Sylvia’s column had been written the day before and was the usual sort of thing. So had Larry’s. I glanced at “Shall We Join the Ladies?” casually, and then came sharply to attention.

  “Shush stuff,” it said. “Rumor creeping around town on rubber soles. An international news syndicate has to go on paying for a certain well-known column until the contract runs out in April, but nobody is going to see it except the janitor who empties the office wastebasket. Reason—aid and comfort to the enemy. Same with his radio contract.”

  I put the paper down, completely stunned. The waiter knocked for the third time before I managed to let him in. When he’d gone I picked up the paper again. A name in the rest of the column caught my eye.

  “Corliss Marshall is making his first Washington appearance since his return from South America at the dinner the glamorous Mrs. Addison Sherwood is giving for Kurt Hofmann, visiting the Capital, tonight. Señor Delvalle, owner and publisher of a string of newspapers, also radio stations, South of the Border, will be there. Prophecy: ex-Congressional War Horse Sam Wharton’s pipedream of an important inter-hemispheric public relations job will sink back into the dust bowl. Effie might as well give up her Spanish and start brushing up on her bingo for the long winter nights at home by the range.—If Corliss Marshall gets Senor Delvalle’s right ear before We Join the Ladies.”

  I poured a cup of coffee and let it sit there. As I started to drink it at last, the phone rang. I picked it up and said “Hello.”

  “Have you seen the papers?”

  It was Sylvia.

  “Just Larry’s column,” I said. I hadn’t even glanced at the front page.

  “That’s what I mean.”

  “Is it true?”

  “I’d heard it, but Pete hasn’t said anything,” she answered. “Would you go around with me to see him? I’m afraid to go alone, with the police following me about. And how’s Barbara?”

  “She’s still asleep,” I said. “How soon do you want to go?”

  “Right away. Will you come up?”

  I woke Barbara up when I was ready to leave. “Look, my dear lamb,” I said. “There’s some food out there. You can phone your mother, but don’t go out. She can see when the coast is clear and come here if she wants to, but you stay in. And don’t answer the phone.”

  She nodded sleepily. “I’m a lot of trouble, aren’t I,” she said, sitting up and trying to blink the sleep out of her eyes. She looked more like six than eighteen.

  I kissed her forehead, “You’re very sweet,” I said. “Remember about the phone, won’t you?”

  All that was a mistake. I kn
ew it the minute I got out into the corridor, because Sergeant Buck wasn’t going to a funeral at all. He was going with me. That was why he was all dressed up. I stared at him with my mouth open.

  “Colonel’s orders, ma’am,” he said grimly, out of the side of his mouth, his face turning the color of tarnished brass.

  “Very well,” I said. There wasn’t anything else I could say. And as a matter of fact I look back on that day with quiet pleasure. I didn’t have to have my hair done, but seeing Sergeant Buck turned to a pillar of salt outside Henri’s while I sat for hours under the dryer was wonderful. I didn’t need any lingerie either, but I knew I’d never again have the pleasure of seeing Sergeant Buck really unhappy. It cost me a lot of money, but it was worth it. But that was later.

  “I’m going to see Miss Peele,” I said, as we got out of the elevator and turned down the hall. “I won’t be long.”

  Sylvia let me in and closed the door.

  “Did you bring the Iron Horse with you?” she demanded.

  “No,” I said. “He came. He’s The Shadow.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  I followed her into the sitting room and stopped. And I said “Oh.” Larry Villiers was standing by the table. The handsome smiling face that had looked up from the upper left-hand corner of the column I’d just read wasn’t smiling now. He looked about as unhappy as it was possible to imagine him looking.

  14

  “You certainly did a nice job this morning,” I said, pleasantly.

  “Shut up, will you!” he said savagely. “I’ve had enough of that from Sylvia. How the hell did I know this was going to happen? I don’t want to get old Effie of the dyed red hair in trouble. Good Lord! Thank the Lord they’ve killed it in the late morning edition.”

  “Yes,” Sylvia said bitterly. “And what about Pete? They’re going to kill that, are they?”

  “I can’t help that.” His voice was as bitter as hers. “If you’d let me tell him what everybody was saying two weeks ago, this wouldn’t have happened. The trouble with you, Sylvia, is you believe he writes that tripe. I don’t. You’re a friend of his and I’m not. He doesn’t take cracks at your stuff the way he does at mine. And still I don’t think he’d sell out, and you do.”

  He flicked the ash off his cigarette onto the floor.

  “Of course, darling, you know him better than I do. If you believe—”

  Sylvia’s face was white. “Stop it, Larry! I don’t believe it!”

  “Oh yes you do, darling,” he said calmly. “You should have seen yourself last night every time somebody brought it up. And there’s no use getting sore at me about it. That’s not what I came here for.”

  “What did you come for?” she asked coolly.

  “Just to suggest that maybe Pete wasn’t the only person at the party last night that might be interested in Corliss’s untimely demise.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She turned quickly from the mirror where she was putting on her hat.

  “Then you do think Pete did it, don’t you?” he said easily. “Well, as I say, you know him better than I do.”

  “I don’t think Pete did it, Larry,” she said. “And if you imply I do in that filthy column of yours, I’ll—”

  “You’ll what, Sylvia?”

  “I’ll never forgive you, Larry—that’s all.”

  He looked at her for an instant and ground his cigarette out in the ash tray.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean that. I didn’t come here to make you feel worse. What I came for was to see if I could do anything to help. You see, they’ve been laying for Pete for a couple of weeks. My apartment’s in the front of the house and I can see them. The telephone girl just told me the other day all his calls are checked. She wanted to tell him, but she didn’t have the nerve. She’s afraid he’d fly off the handle, and she’d lose her job.”

  “What do you mean? Who’s checking on him?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine, darling. There was a new janitor in the building last week. He was keeping Pete’s wastebasket separate from the rest of them. I know because he goes out earlier than I do.”

  “Why didn’t you tell him?” Sylvia demanded.

  “And get my nose punched?”

  “You could have told me.”

  “Not in the state you’ve been in lately, old girl. Not without having all my hair pulled out. But as I was about to say, Pete wasn’t the only person on the terrace with old Corliss last night.”

  Sylvia turned back to the mirror.

  “—Effie Wharton was out there, for instance,” Larry went on coolly. “Bliss Thatcher was there. He’s out, because he wouldn’t murder a willing tool. Delvalle was out for a minute, the same time Pete was. And Alicia was out there too. She was out twice, as a matter of fact, and so was our hostess.”

  “Anybody else?” Sylvia asked quietly.

  “Not that I saw,” Larry said. He looked her steadily in the eyes.

  “Have you told Colonel Primrose?”

  That blank expressionless stare of hers came over her face, and I knew she was herself again.

  Larry nodded. “He was in while I was eating breakfast this morning.”

  “What a shame you didn’t tell him you saw me go out there too,” she said lightly. “Because he knows it. What’s worse, he knows I came back literally steeped in blood. Did you know it too, darling? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Larry didn’t say anything for a minute. I thought his hands were shaking a little.

  “Look,” he said then, unsteadily. “You’re not going to take the rap for that guy? You’re crazy. You can’t do it— you’d be a damned fool. He’s not——”

  “Worth it?” Sylvia said. “We’ll see. And we have to begin now. Your dear friend Alicia called me up this morning. She’s in a frightful stew about something. Any idea what it is?”

  He shook his head.

  “Well, goodbye,” Sylvia said. “Be sure and put the cover back on my typewriter, won’t you.”

  “—I hope,” I said as we started to open the hall door, “that you don’t mind having the Sergeant along.”

  “Oh, on the contrary,” she answered.

  But he wasn’t there—not until we got into the elevator. There he was, standing at a sort of attention, his black hat across his chest, staring brassily in front of him, completely unaware, as far as I could tell, that we were in there at all. Sylvia started to say “Good morning,” but it was so like accosting the Washington Monument that she gave it up.

  “Is your car here?” she asked me instead.

  I nodded. We got out of the elevator and walked through the lobby to the semi-circular drive in front of the hotel, Sergeant Buck shadowing us discreetly ten feet in the rear. Outside I turned around.

  “We’re going to Alicia Wrenn’s, Sergeant,” I said sweetly. “Would you like to come in my car?”

  The brassy patina went a couple of shades darker.

  “I’ll go in my own car, ma’am,” he said bitterly. He turned his head, and this time he did spit, very neatly, into the laurel bushes bordering the drive.

  “This, I can see, is the end of a beautiful friendship,” Sylvia remarked as we got into the car.

  “Mine and the Colonel’s?” I asked.

  “No. The Colonel’s and Sergeant Buck’s.—And a lot of other people’s. Do you happen to know where her ladyship lives, by the way?”

  “The Phillips’ house, isn’t it? Just down on Milbank Terrace.”

  She nodded. We turned down into the maze of narrow lanes that wind in and out on the edge of the Park.

  “She was really in a state this morning, when she called,” she said. “It gave me the creeps. I don’t know why it should have, but it did. Maybe I’m psychic. Lady Alicia is. She told me so last night.”

  I suppose that should have warned me. If being psychic is being extraordinarily sensitive to people and tone and atmosphere, then Sylvia certainly is. But even her “creeps” wasn’t
the word for it. It was more than that. It was terrible, really—and it still frightens me when I think of it.

  We stopped on the side of the hill going up Milbank Terrace. The Phillipses built the house after Lorna Phillips had spent a year in Vienna being psychoanalyzed, and had learned her soul was allergic to light as well as to her husband. At least that’s what people said, and certainly very little light ever got into the place even after she’d divorced her husband.

  “It’s a dismal hole, isn’t it?” Sylvia observed as a dour gaunt-faced Scottish woman showed us into the drawing room. She pulled the heavy red wool curtains across the door behind her as she went to fetch her mistress.

  Sylvia sniffed the air like a pointer in the field. “What’s that?”

  “Lady Alicia’s tweeds, probably,” I said. “Aren’t they smoky when they’re good?”

  “She didn’t sound very tweedy this morning.”

  In a moment the maid appeared again between the red curtains.

  “You’re to come up to the library,” she said ungraciously. I looked at her a little surprised. It was plain she didn’t like our being there at all, and wasn’t trying to conceal the fact. She reminded me of a female Sergeant Buck—or did until I saw her eyes. They were sea-blue, and behind their sullen offensive stare was almost unbearable tragedy. And that should have warned me too.

  “What’s the matter with her, do you suppose?” Sylvia whispered as we followed her up the dark zig-zag staircase that had reminded Loma Phillips of a Tyrolean hunting lodge. Animal skins were draped over the banisters, the head of a wild boar grinned down from the top landing.

  Sylvia sniffed again. The servant opened the library door at the end of the hall. It was dark too. What light there was struggled cold and jaundiced through narrow panes of amber glass in the arched window at the end of the room.

  Lady Alicia was sitting at a table under it. A greenish candle was smoking in front of her, filling the room with a pungent unholy kind of smell. She was playing solitaire, I thought, and so intently that she didn’t look up until the maid said, “They’re here, my lady.” Then she turned and looked at us.