Gallows in My Garden

by Deming, Richard

  Instead of becoming angry, it seemed to strike her as funny, for her lips spread in a smile which was almost a grin. “Douglas and I have always been fond of each other, but in an entirely different way when Donald was alive. It simply would never have occurred to Douglas to covet Donald’s wife. Donald was his big brother, his father, and his boyhood hero all rolled into one. I doubt that he ever really took a good look at me until he finally began to realize Donald was gone forever and I was a widow. And that was at least six months after the accident, for he took Donald’s death pretty hard.

  “If you think Douglas in some miraculous manner staged the accident which killed my husband—incidentally putting himself in the hospital—then murdered Don Junior and tried to kill Grace so I’d inherit the money and he could marry me for it, I’m afraid you’d never be able to convince me. In the first place he has plenty of money of his own. I’d estimate his practice brings in at least twenty-five thousand a year, and deducting the four years he was a Medical Corps major, he’s had eleven years of practice. In the second place you yourself said he was no longer a suspect insofar as Grace is concerned, because he was the one who rescued her from the pool. In the third place, while he was never overfond of Don Junior, Douglas wouldn’t hurt Grace for all the money in the world. He’s fully as deranged about that girl as her father was, and that was almost a psychotic attachment.”

  She smiled in reminiscence. “I recall when Grace was fifteen she got mad at Douglas about something—some boy she had been forbidden to see, I believe it was. She confided to Douglas that she was seeing him anyway, and Douglas told her father. Grace declared Douglas was a snitch, refused to speak to him for two weeks, and said she’d never speak to him again as long as she lived. Of course she got over it, but until she did Douglas was literally sick. All the humor and mockery went out of him as though cut off by a switch. He actually lost weight, and I believe he’d have ended up sick in bed if Grace hadn’t decided he was punished enough and forgiven him.”

  I said, “He snitched again when she and Arnold got married.”

  “Only to me,” Ann said quickly. “And that doesn’t count. Douglas knows I wouldn’t hurt Grace any more than he would.”

  “There is something I don’t understand about you,” I said. “Here you have a perfectly legal right to twenty million dollars, yet you withheld what you knew simply to avoid hurting Grace’s feelings. I’m afraid for that amount I’d be willing to hurt nearly anyone’s feelings.”

  “Probably it’s hard for other people to understand,” she said quietly, “but I already have all the material comforts the Lawson millions could bring me. All the inheritance means to me is a pile of paper certificates to hold in a safe-deposit box, for I have no interest in operating the business. But the main reason is I feel I have no moral right to the money. Donald intended it to be Grace’s, and I’m sure he would have approved of Arnold and given his blessing had he known him. What it boils down to is the loss of Grace’s friendship isn’t worth twenty million dollars to me.”

  “Think you’ll lose it?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Not now. But had I disclosed the secret rather than Arnold, I’m afraid I would have. Grace would regard that as cheating, which, of course, it would have been.”

  “Will she be mad at Arnold?”

  “Probably. But since he did it through the unselfish motive of saving her life, no doubt she’ll get over it.”

  “Does the money mean so much to Grace?” I asked. “The day I met her she seemed to think it unfair of her father not to have left it to you.”

  “It isn’t the money so much,” Ann explained. “It evolves more about Grace’s code of behavior. In many respects she’s still a little girl. She loves an intrigue such as her secret marriage, with millions the forfeit if she was caught. Since she regards me as her family, I doubt that she really cares whose name the money is in, but if she suspected I wanted to get it away from her by trickery, she’d fight like a tiger.”

  “Will you accept the inheritance now that everything is open and aboveboard?”

  “I suppose I’ll have to. No, that isn’t being honest. I suppose if I wanted I could sign everything back to Grace. But if Donald had left everything to me in the first place, of course I would have accepted it, so there’s no reason for me not to now. Of course I’ll give Grace everything she wants, and I’ll make her my sole heir.” She smiled slightly. “Jonathan’s going to grow tired of my changing my will.”

  “Let’s go on to Arnold Tate,” I said.

  Arnold, it developed, had cropped up about a month after Ann became a widow. Aside from what I already knew about him, I learned he was from Kansas City, his father was a high-school teacher, and he had one younger brother, who was in the Navy. Ann had never met his folks.

  About the servants Ann knew practically nothing. None of the five were married, and all lived in, but aside from that she knew nothing of their various backgrounds or private lives, since Maggie did all the hiring. Maggie and Jason had been working when she married Donald Lawson. When they moved to the present house five years before, Edmund, a maid, and a helper for Jason had been added. The latter two positions had had several turnovers, and Kate and Karl had both been working only about six months. Karl, she believed, had graduated from high school in an orphanage just before coming to work here. Kate had been a maid somewhere else, but Ann did not know where.

  Deciding I had gleaned all the information I could from her, I closed the interview by suggesting we go up to check on the conditions of Grace and Fausta. She rose with an air of relief and preceded me up the stairs.

  Grace Lawson’s room was the third to the right from the stair head. The door just before it stood open, and as Ann reached it she stopped without warning. Not many people know I have a false leg, and sometimes I almost forget it myself. But at this moment I was reminded of it suddenly, for when Ann stopped, my good leg was swinging forward and my entire weight rested on an aluminum foot. With a false leg, once you start to take a step, you can’t stop. I finished the step and crashed 190 pounds into Ann’s soft body.

  As she stumbled away from me, I grabbed her to keep her from falling, and she clawed at my shoulders in an endeavor to prevent the same thing. After a couple of erratic waltz steps, we ended in the middle of the hall with my hands locked behind her back and her arms circling my neck. For a surprised moment we remained in that position, staring at each other.

  “Don’t let me interrupt,” said a cold voice.

  Without uncoupling, both of us glanced at Doctor Lawson, who frowned at us from the door of the room in front of which Ann had started to halt. At the same moment Fausta appeared in the doorway of Grace’s bedroom. Her eyes drooped half shut and she weaved drunkenly, regaining her balance by planting a hand on either side of the doorway.

  “Manny Moon,” she said in a dull, hang-over laden voice, “you turn loose that Jezebel.”

  XVII

  BY DINNERTIME Grace was also awake and up, though neither she nor Fausta was in any mood for dinner. Neither had any idea of what had happened to her, remembering nothing after finishing her drink at the pool.

  By the time Grace awakened, Doctor Lawson had recovered from his peeve at finding his fiancée in my arms, and tended to consider the incident rather funny. Fausta, however, continued to regard her hostess with belligerent suspicion and to maintain a cold hauteur toward me. Actually I think she was too sick to care particularly whether another woman stole me or not, but reflex action made her go through the motions of jealousy.

  After dinner another group conclave was held, during which it was again decided Grace should leave the house. Grace, subdued by her experience in the pool, sick to her stomach and with a throbbing headache, offered no resistance to anything.

  “Since you all know Grace was at El Patio before,” I told the group, “there isn’t much point in trying to conceal she’s going back there. I’m inclined to agree with Arnold Tate that since his announcement of the
secret marriage, there will be no further attempts on Grace’s life. But I have no intention of taking chances. For the benefit of whichever one of you it applies to, there is only one stairway to the upper floor at El Patio. Mr. Greene here will be at the top of it all night with a cocked pistol, so if you have any urgent reason to talk to Grace, phone her. There’s a phone in the apartment listed under Miss Moreni’s name.”

  Leaving them with this cheerful information, we returned to El Patio in Mouldy Greene’s convertible. We arrived about eight o’clock, the hour Fausta usually began floating from table to table greeting customers. But tonight she was in no condition to play the charming hostess. She and Grace retired together, locking the apartment door from inside.

  I helped Mouldy set up a folding cot across the doorway to Fausta’s apartment, watched while he made it up and tucked his automatic under the pillow, and gave him some final instructions before leaving him.

  “I’ll be back at eight in the morning,” I told him. “Until then Grace stays in that apartment even if you have to tie her. Don’t let anyone in, and don’t let her out for any reason.”

  “Suppose we have a fire?”

  I contemplated him moodily. “Just puncture your head and let the water spurt on the flames.”

  On the surface it might have seemed moronic to leave Grace’s protection in the hands of Mouldy Greene, but his single efficiency was acting as a sentry. In the army I learned that once Greene understood his assignment, nothing on earth could get past him to whatever he was guarding. His only trouble was lack of imagination, and once in Ireland he nearly shot the pants off a brigadier general who insisted on walking across the grass in front of the captain’s orderly room.

  We were quartered in British barracks at the time, and the lawn in front of the orderly room had just been freshly sodded. As first sergeant I asked the officer of the day if he would have the sentry on that post keep people off the grass in addition to his regular instructions. Mouldy drew that particular post, and to Mouldy an order was an order.

  Only the fact that Greene could not hit a Tiger tank at ten yards with a rifle prevented us from having a dead general on our hands. And only the fact that Private Marmaduke Greene was already classified as a basic, which is as low as you can get in the army, prevented the captain from reducing him the minute the general ran out of words and removed his singed pants from the area.

  Therefore, while it was entirely possible I might find a dead cleaning-woman in the upper hall when I returned to El Patio, I was reasonably certain Grace Lawson was safe.

  In the city directory at the bar downstairs I found Vance Logan listed at apartment 217 of the Grand Towers. The address struck me as rather peculiar for an ex-chauffeur, since the Grand Towers is an apartment hotel catering almost exclusively to the wealthy.

  The directory indicated he had a single-party phone, but since I preferred to walk in on him unannounced before he had time to mull over what I might want with him, I skipped phoning in advance.

  A taxi took me to the Grand Towers. I had the driver park in the nearest vacancy to the entrance, about a quarter of a block away, and told him to wait.

  The Towers is one of those residential hotels with a small but expensively furnished lobby and a call desk behind which no one ever seems to be on duty. A buzzer with a mother-of-pearl button was mounted at one end of the desk, presumably for the summoning of the manager in case you happened to want to rent a three-hundred-dollar-a-month apartment.

  I walked past the buzzer, past a self-service elevator, and climbed the stairs to the second floor. Here I found a long hallway of oak paneling, floored with a gray carpet about as thick as the mattress on my bed. I waded through the nap of the carpet to a door marked 217.

  I had my choice of a bronze door knocker in the shape of a lion’s head, or another mother-of-pearl button. I tried the button first, thought I heard faint chimes, but could not be sure. When nothing happened after nearly a minute, I reached for the knocker.

  As I thrust my fingers against the lion’s nose, his head moved away from me slightly. I glanced sidewise and saw my movement had pushed the door open a crack. Abandoning the knocker, I tried the button again and this time heard the chimes distinctly.

  When no one answered after two more tries, I pushed the door open the rest of the way and looked in. It was not yet quite dark but heavy draperies were pulled across the three windows opposite me. Two floor lamps were on in the front room, and by their light I could see the apartment was furnished in accordance with the high rent charged.

  It was also furnished with a corpse.

  He wore a blue dressing-gown and he sat in a deep armchair facing the door. An untouched highball in which the ice had long ago melted stood on an end table next to his chair. I judged him to have been in his early thirties, and he would not have been bad-looking if there had been a top to his head.

  Closing the door with my elbow, I made a tour of the whole apartment without touching anything. It contained a bedroom, bath, kitchenette, and dinette in addition to the front room, and no murderers were hiding in any of them. Back in the front room I stooped to examine the gun clutched in the dead man’s right hand. It was a P-38.

  Grasping his dressing-gown sleeve, I gently pulled his arm away from the side of the chair until the light fell on the gun’s serial number. I recognized the number because it was my P-38.

  Using my handkerchief, I used the apartment’s phone to call Warren Day’s flat.

  “Listen, Moon,” he greeted me. “I got office hours, and nine at night isn’t one of them. Whose body you got this time?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “But I think his name is Vance Logan.”

  For a moment there was silence. “You mean you really got a body?” he asked finally. “You’re not just trying to be funny?”

  “I really got one,” I assured him.

  “Judas Priest!” he exploded. “Why don’t you stay home nights?”

  “I’m at apartment two-seventeen of the Grand Towers,” I told him. “The apartment is listed under Vance Logan, who was chauffeuring Donald Lawson Senior about a year ago when Lawson was killed in an auto accident. If this guy is Vance Logan, he is supposed to have committed suicide because he’s got a gun in his hand. The only catch is the gun belongs to me, and is the one I reported heisted by Harry the Horse and Dude Garrity.”

  “I’ll be right over,” he said wearily. “Don’t touch anything.”

  “I hadn’t intended to,” I said shortly, and hung up.

  The police arrived with sirens wide open and a callous disregard for the nervous system of the fat hotel manager, who popped out of the wall some place the minute Warren Day walked into the room. To say the manager was horrified would be an understatement. He seemed to think the murder was a deliberate plot by the police to destroy his hotel’s reputation, and I got the impression his solution to the killing would have been to drop the body in the river and forget the whole thing.

  “I knew I should have asked that man for references!” he wailed when he saw the corpse.

  “Shut up and get out of the way!” Day snarled at him.

  The next half hour was a madhouse of popping flash bulbs, fingerprint dust, and barked orders from the inspector. A medical examiner fixed the time of death as somewhere between twelve and twenty-four hours earlier, and the hotel manager identified the body as that of Vance Logan. Vance departed in a wicker basket just as the first reporters arrived.

  The inspector gathered the reporters around him in the hall and said, “The victim is Vance Logan and this is his apartment. He was found by Manville Moon, who was visiting him on business. He had a German automatic in his hand and a bullet in his head. Been dead several hours when discovered. On the surface it looks like suicide, but we think it’s murder and have already dug up several important clues. We have a lead on the suspected killer—or killers—and expect to make an arrest within twenty-four hours. No stone will be left unturned to—“

 
“Who’s the suspected killer?” a reporter from the Post asked. “Off the record, of course.”

  The inspector glared at him. “No stone will be left unturned to bring the murderer to justice speedily. You may quote me as saying outrages such as this will not be tolerated as long as I remain chief of Homicide, and my department will not rest until the culprit is safely behind bars.” He paused, peered around the circle of bored faces, and snapped, “No further statement.”

  “Who was this guy, Inspector?” asked the reporter from the Post. “Give with a little background.”

  “Get it from the hotel manager, here,” Day said, jerking his thumb at the fat man.

  Then he took my arm and led me back into the apartment. Before he closed the door, we could hear the manager saying appealingly, “Couldn’t you fellows say ‘a downtown hotel’ instead of ‘Grand” Towers'? Mr. Logan wasn’t one of the regular residents, you see. Only been here a few months and—“

  The inspector shut the door and cut off the rest of it.

  Lieutenant Hannegan idly rested on the front-room sofa, but the rest of the police horde had departed.

  “All right, Moon,” Day said wearily. “Now give with the dope.”

  Briefly I explained how and why I happened to find the body.

  “On the surface it looks like this ties Donald Senior’s death in with Don Junior’s and the attempts on young Grace,” the inspector said, scratching his bald head. “If you hadn’t already connected this Logan with the Lawson case, it might have passed as a suicide. But why you suppose those two mugs were stupid enough to use a gun that could be traced?”

  I shrugged. “It’s a war souvenir. Must be thousands of unregistered German P-38s floating around. Maybe they thought my mind worked like theirs and I wouldn’t have registered it.”

  “Is it registered?”

  I looked at him coldly. “If you think back, Inspector, you’ve had me in jail three times on charges you dreamed up but couldn’t make stick. Every time you took my gun away and checked the registration.”