Death of an Old Sinner (The Mrs. Norris Mysteries Book 1)

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  Then he held it under her nose. “This is a day key, Mrs. Norris, not a night key.”

  She drew herself up to her best height. “Such a thought never crossed the threshold of my mind, Master Jamie.”

  “Then it was wiping its feet at the door,” he said.

  Between them they had the tea brewed when Helene came out of her workroom. “You two are in high spirits,” she said.

  “Did you see the afternoon paper?” said Jimmie. “I just happen to have one in my pocket.”

  Jasper Tully arrived soon thereafter with a second copy. He also carried the General’s valise, surrendered to him by the property clerk. The final report was in from the Medical Examiner—General Jarvis had died of coronary thrombosis. Tully was glad to hear Jimmie had had a good day, his own having been a misery. Furthermore, the D.A. was wondering why, as long as he seemed to be running on Jimmie’s ticket for Lieutenant Governor, he didn’t resign from the District Attorney’s staff.

  “Not a bad idea, Tully for Lieutenant Governor,” Jimmie said. He wiped butter from his fingers. “Well, shall we have a look at father’s masterpiece? By the way, just for the hell of it, I stopped by an expert’s. It was his opinion this was genuine, so let it not be said that the old boy did a sloppy job of forgery.”

  “Forgery?” Mrs. Norris put her fist to her breast.

  “Oh, without a doubt,” Jimmie said. “I have no doubt he was working on it all afternoon of the day he died.”

  Mr. Tully lifted the book to his nose. “Is it written in iodine?”

  “No, it’s ink all right. He had the formula for the ink made in those days, and a sample of the shade he wanted all in my dispatch case. I suppose in time we’ll turn up the chemist who prepared it for him, or the printer. Chemist, I suppose.”

  Mrs. Norris lifted her chin at the word printer. Something began to happen inside her, and she had to find a magazine to fan herself.

  “When he was experimenting for himself,” Tully said, “he must’ve been using iodine. I found three bottles up there.”

  Mrs. Norris cleared her throat. “And the gardener brought a fistful of nibs in from the flower bed under his window.”

  Helene laughed aloud. “What a marvelous scandal this might have made!” She had taken the diary from Tully’s hands and read a passage.

  “You have a charming sense of humor,” Jimmie said.

  “Oh,” she said, “here it is—the passage that landed poor Python in the hospital.”

  “Read it out!” Tully said.

  Mrs. Norris could not share their mirth. She was remembering the talking-to she had given the Nyack telephone office for having billed two calls to Brooklyn instead of one. She just could not listen to the things they were laughing and shaking their heads over. But the good Lord be praised, at least, she had had the wisdom not to make her censure of the old gentleman too loud. Oh, she could remember now the occasions on which Mr. Robinson had been to Nyack. He had been introduced to General Jarvis, and Mr. Robinson was not a man to consider his position in life. She had often thought he didn’t know his own place, making free to wander into the garage. Oh, oh, oh. Her head reeled with the chagrin of it.

  “Well,” Jasper Tully said finally, “there’s two men dead, and while there’s a thing or two explained, we’re not much closer to the how, why and who of that.” He accounted then his own day, starting with his last visit in Brooklyn. “One thing kind of significant to me about The Rock’s banking habits, Jimmie, he made his deposits every other day, and he always got his receipts in duplicate.”

  “A partner?” Jimmie said.

  “I don’t see any other explanation,” Tully said: “The Brooklyn police say it could be tax information. They got a tracer on that, but I’d go along on the partner idea.”

  “I suppose we’re reasonably safe in assuming that it was not Father,” Jimmie said.

  “Maybe you are,” Tully drawled. “I’m not making any assumptions from here on in. I’ve put out a questionnaire to every bank in Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx. I want to know if anybody else in New York was in the habit of making deposits on alternate days. The Rock’s business practices sound to me like a crook’s check on a crook.”

  Jimmie grinned, catching some of Tully’s slow fire. It had been a long time since they worked together, and he had all but forgotten the strain tightening with each new discovery, the agony of each frustration. Tully gave the impression of being a man of infinite patience, but if you knew him like Jimmie did, you could see the fire kindling.

  “What else, Jasp?”

  Tully shrugged. “I went to see a thug called Slim, The Rock’s personal servant, the guy who wasn’t with him when he got taken for the last mile.”

  “Did you ask him why not, where he was?”

  “Nope. That’s the Brooklyn boys’ work. And you can’t ask a man about where he wasn’t. Only where he was. Anyway I was hoping to tie up the General’s fair lady with The Rock. It didn’t work out. No women in The Rock’s life at all. No women, no liquor…only horses and foreign sports cars, and he wouldn’t talk about the horses.”

  “The cars he had in common with father,” Jimmie said.

  Tully nodded. “Do you know that Austin-Healey of The Rock’s is an exact replica of one owned by the Duke of Glower?”

  “So?” said Jimmie.

  Tully sighed. “I was hoping that might mean something to you.”

  “How did he know they were alike?” Jimmie said, trying to oblige.

  “Knew somebody who was an expert—according to Slim. Just seems funny, being an expert on something like that, and the friend of a gangster.”

  “Let me tell you something, Jasper, rum-running in its day made an aristocracy among gangdom. Johnny The Rock was the last Mogul. There were morning coats at his funeral.”

  “I should’ve gone myself,” Tully said. “That may turn out to be the biggest mistake I made on this case, not being there to look over the chauffeurs.”

  Jimmie slapped him on the back. “You can’t be two places at once, Jasp.”

  “Funny,” Tully said, lifting his sad eyes from their contemplation of his own shoetops, “you never said that when you were District Attorney.” He gathered his feet under him. “If I get a wire recorder down here, would you be willing to go over it from the beginning tonight?”

  “Willing, but not eager,” Jimmie said, thinking it must start at Albany for him.

  “Mrs. Norris?”

  “Aye.” She thought of the day the old man asked her for a few dollars until the first of the month. He had gone straight from her refusal to the family papers in the attic.

  “Do you mind, Mrs. Joyce?”

  Helene shook her head, and thought of seeing in Lem Python’s column that Madeline Barker was lunching with James Ransom Jarvis.

  “I guess for me it starts on Water Street,” Tully said, “me as a stranger trying to place a bet at the one-armed restaurant called Minnie’s before we staked it out.” He pointed to the diary in Jimmie’s hand. “What are you going to do with that?”

  “Put it right back in the attic—and if it shows up a hundred years hence, let them worry about its authenticity. A little scandal then may save the Jarvis name from oblivion.”

  “You sound just like your father,” Mrs. Norris said with vast disapproval.

  40

  MRS. NORRIS TOLD NO one where she was going in the morning. Mr. James was near ruin for the public discussion of his private family affairs. If there was matter for disgrace in her own family, Mrs. Norris intended to keep it to herself as long as possible. She took the subway, a bus and a taxi, and then went by shank’s mare, the last block to Mr. Robinson’s printing shop.

  It was a cold and windy day, and having got her courage to its highest point for the encounter, she was furious to find the place locked up as tight as a bailiff’s fist. She pounded on the doors, front and back, and then seriously contemplated breaking a window. The prospect of being caught at it restrain
ed her. She crossed from the back way to a lunchroom where she hoped for a cup of hot tea to tune up her powers of cogitation. Just as she was going into the foggy-windowed restaurant, Minnie’s, she remembered that this was the place which Mr. Tully had been watching the night he saw the General go by at top speed.

  Mrs. Norris sat on the last stool, near the cash register. Two other customers were huddled over steaming cups at the other end of the counter. Minnie came to her, drying his hands on his apron. Though she loathed coffee, she ordered it, thinking that asking for tea might antagonize the restaurant keeper, and that she did not want to do. He was pleasant enough to give her courage. She remembered that Mr. Tully had tried unsuccessfully to place a bet here.

  “I’m a great follower of the horses,” she said, when Minnie brought her coffee, “or I was in the old country. A friend of mine down the street said you might put me next to where I could lay a few dollars on a nag.”

  Minnie looked at her through half-closed eyes. “Who’s your friend?”

  “His name’s Jim. He works for the coal yard at the corner,” she said with a fine glibness.

  “Jim,” Minnie repeated. “Have a doughnut with your coffee.” He brought one and gave it to her without her saying please, no, or thank you. Meanwhile he was examining her from all angles. He turned on the radio then, loud enough so that the two men at the other end of the counter needed to raise their voices to talk to one another. He took a dime from the cash register and went into the phone booth behind her. A telephone stood unused beside the register.

  Mrs. Norris could feel the pickup of her heartbeat. She was glad the two working men were present at the other end of the counter.

  Minnie came out, turned down the radio, and gave her a wink and a nod of his head. Whether to be glad or sad, Mrs. Norris didn’t know. If he took her money no doubt the information would be valuable to Mr. Tully…but she couldn’t even name a horse. Worse, she couldn’t name the park where they were running.

  The two working men got up, paid their bill at the cash register and left.

  “More coffee?” Minnie asked her.

  She was already nauseous with what she had had. She shook her head. “Could I look at your paper?” she said.

  “Why not?” Minnie handed her the News.

  She tried not to make obvious haste in finding the sports page. With the rattle of pages, however, she did not hear the man come up behind her. She jumped when he spoke.

  “This the lady?”

  Since there was no other present, it was an unnecessary question, but Mrs. Norris spun around, and managed to get her toes on the floor. It was the round-faced chauffeur. He caught her arm and helped her rather roughly off the stool. “I ain’t got much time, lady, but I want to take you on a little trip.”

  “No thank you,” Mrs. Norris said, trying to jerk her arm free.

  “It won’t hurt a bit,” he said.

  “I haven’t paid for my coffee,” Mrs. Norris cried, already being borne through the door.

  “It’s on the house,” Minnie called after them. “Tell the D.A. to come around in his own pants next time.”

  Foolish, foolish me, Mrs. Norris thought. Before her was a spotless black limousine. Surely not…

  “Hold on there, man!”

  Mrs. Norris was almost as happy as of old to see Mr. Robinson then.

  “This is my sister-in-law,” he said, “who the devil are you?”

  The burly one stood staring, “Nick said…”

  “Get away out of here and leave this woman alone!” Mr. Robinson began waving his arms as though he were scattering chickens.

  Mrs. Norris jerked her arm free of the big one’s hand. He had not much of a grasp on her. For all Mr. Robinson’s act they were no strangers, these two, and that was the most frightening thing of all.

  Mr. Robinson took her in charge. He began to walk her across the street. “Were you on your way to see me, Annie? You shouldn’t speak to strangers in this neighborhood, you know.”

  She was by no means sure she should speak to as intimate an acquaintance as her brother-in-law, for that matter. But she had undertaken to pilot this mission herself, and it was now under full sail.

  Mr. Robinson took her through the plant, all the machinery covered and still, and in his private office sat her down in a leather chair. “Now, my dear, tell me what happened.”

  Mrs. Norris decided on a direct question. “Mr. Robinson, did you help General Jarvis with that forgery he tried to sell as a diary?”

  Robbie threw back his head and laughed. “Discovered so soon!” he cried. “I wonder if he wouldn’t have carried it off if he had lived. He was a remarkable man, Annie… Yes, I helped him. And proud I was to be asked, if you want to know.”

  “I see,” said Mrs. Norris, not prepared for so frank an admission. “Who was the man you just took me out of the clutches of?”

  Mr. Robinson had no intention of being frank in that matter. “I have no notion, having but seen him around the neighborhood, Annie. I suspect he’s a gangster, if you must know. That’s why I came up on the run. He may have mistook you for someone else. Or were you up to something suspicious?”

  Oh, the wily one, she thought. If she admitted now trying to place the bet, he would be off the hook and away. Bad as she was at it, she must try a little acting of her own. She picked up a magazine and fanned herself. “A gangster did you say, Mr. Robinson? Do you think he was planning to give me a ride in that, that hearse?”

  “That seemed your direction when I rescued you.”

  She fanned herself more violently. “Do you have a drop of whiskey, Mr. Robinson? My heart’s palpitating near to bursting.”

  Mr. Robinson swung open a cabinet door in the midst of his books, and took a bottle out and with it a glass. Mrs. Norris got another start. The paneling was covered with pictures of foreign cars… The Duke of Glower, she thought, Rocco The Rock and the Duke of Glower. Her brother-in-law poured her a drink, his face set in a hard little smile of toleration. Whether or not she was fooling him, she didn’t know. Likely not. But it served his purpose to play the game with her.

  “Mr. Robinson, I’ll need a drop of water to run that down in. When it’s my heart, I cannot take it neat.”

  Robbie bowed and went out of the office with a glass.

  She hopped to the opened panel, for opposite the liquor cabinet was its match, another cabinet, and she prayed it might open on the same key. It did. There was a boxful of money within it, and a neat little bundle of bank deposit slips. One of them she managed to loose and pocket. She locked the cabinet and put the key where she had found it. On the wall of the panel was taped a card with a phone number: EX 4—1587. She had just managed to fling herself back in the chair when Mr. Robinson returned. If he knew she had been out of it, he did not let on.

  “I’m taking Mag to Florida, by the way, Annie. I’ve sold the business here, which is why everything is shut up.”

  “Florida?” she repeated. Remembering then her need for it, she sipped the water and downed the whiskey.

  “It’s a fine place for Mag. The Brooklyn climate is bad for her health, the doctors say.”

  “She was hoping it was Scotland you’d take her to, Mr. Robinson. That’s what I came to talk to you about.”

  “Is it—and not the old gentleman’s forgeries?”

  “Oh, them,” she said. “They’ll soon be forgot.”

  “As will we all when we are gone, Annie. Scotland would kill her…as Florida may me. Now I have work to do. Can I put you in a taxi for somewhere? They’re hard to find in this neighborhood, taxis.”

  “I wish you would,” she said. “I’d prefer not to meet the gentleman with the limousine again.”

  Half-fact, half-fantasy, Mrs. Norris thought, once more walking out into God’s sunlight. At the end of the block, Mr. Robinson hailed a cab. It was occupied, but the driver called out to wait. He would be right back.

  “I don’t suppose you have time to stop and see Mag?” Mr.
Robinson said, at the cab door.

  “I’m in a bit of a hurry to get back to Manhattan,” Mrs. Norris said.

  Robinson grinned. “I’ll bet you are. Good-bye, Annie.”

  Mrs. Norris did not know what sort of impression she had left with her brother-in-law. All that money…and the deposit slips. She took it out of her purse and looked at it. The First Federal Bank. That was the bank in front of which the gangster Rocco had been picked up for his last ride. There was no doubt at all that it was Robbie who was getting the duplicate deposit slips. Poor Mag. Poor herself, having to confess this in the family. She leaned forward and asked the cabbie to stop at the first public phone and wait while she made a call.

  She dialed EX 4—1587. Presently a man answered.

  “Who is this?” Mrs. Norris tried to be authoritative.

  “You got the wrong number, lady. This is a unlisted phone.” Whoever it was hung up. Not a cultured voice certainly.

  Mrs. Norris put in a call to the Manhattan District Attorney’s office and asked for Jasper Tully. He was expected in soon. Not soon enough for Mrs. Norris. “I want to leave him a message then. It’s very important. This is Mrs. Norris, Mrs. Annie Norris.”

  “What number are you calling from, Mrs. Norris?”

  She gave the number. “But I won’t be here! It’s a public phone. Now I want you to tell Mr. Tully—I have one of the other bank deposit slips, one of the duplicates. Do you have that?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” It was the District Attorney’s secretary, and she sounded competent as she repeated the message.

  “And I want you to give him this number to trace—it’s unlisted and it may be important.”

  The woman took the number and repeated it. “Anything else, Mrs. Norris?”

  “I should think that’s enough,” Mrs. Norris said, and hung up.

  She had something else on her own mind, however, something the goonish chauffeur had said that she did not want to forget. It had an odd but persistent association in her mind with something she had seen or heard recently.