“Me?” Pat glanced up and put the paper down for a moment. “You’re crazy!” she stated calmly. “Must have been that dizzy atmosphere you work in. What on earth would I be doing out at that hour?”
“Search me; but it looked like you. Can’t be sure, of course.”
“You bet you can’t!” And Patricia resumed her reading.
Maria stood waiting, fingering her watch-chain, gazing out over the summer morning haze misting the bulk of the city. But the matter was obviously finished for Dick’s only comment was one of regret.
“Just goes to show you what tricks life can play on a guy, especially at night,” he grinned. “I could have sworn— Oh, be damned to it! What’s your plan for today, Aunt? Like me to show you around?”
“That’s nice of you, Richard; but surely you’re tired after being up half the night?”
“Oh, I. can usually get a little shut-eye from seven to ten in the evening; I skipped it yesterday because you arrived. Skip it again today if you like. Lots of things I’d like to show you—”
“That’s my sphere, Dick,” Janet announced, walking in. “Good morning, Aunt.... I claimed Aunt last night,” she added, looking at Dick. “Remember? When Pat made that sour crack about Grant’s Tomb?”
“Ha-ha!” Pat exclaimed sarcastically, without bothering to look
“As a matter of fact,” Maria said, “I have my own plans— No, no, let me finish! I move slowly at my age—slowly, but surely. I work out everything to suit my...my time of life. So I’m going to look round this big city of yours in my own time and in my own way—first. I wouldn’t dream of asking either of you to trail about with me. You are young, have your own pursuits. Forget all about me.”
Dick and Janet glanced at each other questioningly, then Dick shrugged. He looked genuinely disappointed.
“Okay, Aunt, if that’s the way you want it.”
“And if you ever do need a guide we stand at the gate like Horatius,” Alice Black said, coming in and administering kisses all round. “Never forget that, Maria dear.... I admire Horatius immensely, don’t you?”
“Never met him,” Janet shrugged. “Besides, I always thought he kept a bridge or something.”
Her mother looked astonished. “Why, Jan dear, I do believe you’re right! I must look it up— Oh, but I don’t suppose it really matters, does it...? You slept well, Maria dear? Yes, I see you did. You are positively glowing. Come along and sit down now— And Walters, not too much sugar in the coffee. And tea for you, Maria, of course? Pat! Whatever are you looking so cross about?”
“Who’s looking cross?” Pat came to her chair and glared round defiantly.
“You are, sweet one,” Dick murmured. “What happened? Boy friend stand you up, or something?”
“Don’t be so cheap!”
“All right, skip it. What’s in the paper then? Hand it over. Might as well see who’s pinching something which doesn’t belong to him—”
Pat reached for it but at that identical moment what appeared to be a gust of wind whirled it from her grasp. She made a dive from her chair, missed it. It went sailing over the terrace and floated out like a dismembering kite towards the distant rooftops.
Dick threw down his grapefruit spoon in annoyance.
“That wasn’t very bright!” he snorted. “You know I like the morning news.”
“Could I help it if the darn thing blew away?” Pat demanded heatedly, resuming her chair. “You sound as though you think I did it on purpose, or something.”
Walters interposed gravely. “Shall I obtain another one, Mr. Dick?”
“No, no, it doesn’t matter. I’ll grab one as I go out.”
Maria drank her tea without apparently taking strict notice of what was going on, but she did observe that the wind that had whirled away the paper had not been present elsewhere on the terrace. Pat had deliberately thrown the paper away, probably in the hope that nobody else would trouble to get another copy. That it was the New York Times Maria already knew: she had noticed that long ago.
“You’ll be seeing Mr. Johnson this morning, of course, Maria?” Alice questioned presently.
Maria nodded. “I have also one or two matters of a professional nature which I would like to attend to. I have recalled one or two things I forgot to mention to Miss Tanby before I left Roseway....” Maria paused and looked round. “Do any of you happen to possess a typewriter? I’m accustomed to one. So much quicker than handwriting if one has detailed matter to convey.”
There was a momentary silence that Dick was first to break.
“I’ve one at the office. Not much use, though. Big, heavy thing.... Say, Pat, you’ve got a portable, and noiseless, too.”
She shrugged. “No use, the spring’s gone. I keep forgetting to have it fixed— Sorry, Aunt,” she finished, with a brief glance.
“I have a portable also, at the theater,” Janet volunteered. “I could have Mary bring it over— She’s my personal maid and secretary,” she added, by way of explanation. “Sort of girl-of-all-work, rolled into one. She could—”
“Never mind,” Maria smiled. “I’ll manage. No need to go to all that trouble.”
“Seems to me we’d better buy in a brace of typewriters,” Dick grinned.
“Absurd!” Maria reproved him gravely—then she stiffened suddenly at a curt command from a corner of the terrace.
“Wash your necks! Quick! The lot of you!”
“I beg your pardon—?” Then Maria relaxed as she beheld a parrot turning somersaults in his glittering cage.
“Meet Cresty,” Janet smiled. “He was put to bed when you came yesterday, Aunt, in case he went off in one of his screeching fits. He always does when strangers are about.”
“Hio! You’re a dozy lot!”
“Hey there, Cresty, lay off!” Dick shouted. “Don’t you know your favorite Aunt is present?” He stopped and frowned over a problem. “Say, Pat, did you teach him that ‘Wash your neck!’ line? Sounds like one of your weak-moment specialities.”
“Why should I bother to teach him anything? I imagine he picks up quite enough as it is.”
“Dirty work!” Cresty screamed, feathers bristling. “I saw you do it! I saw you do it!”
The family exchanged quick glances. Then Pat wheeled round.
“Cresty, be quiet! Stop making that racket, can’t you?”
“Oi! What’s it to you? Good old Walters! Walters wants a shave!”
“Now you know, Walters,” Dick observed dryly. “Better go and find a razor!”
Janet gave a chuckle. “Before long Cresty will start to sing my songs. He picks them up amazingly. I practice in the room next to the lounge and he’s quite good on the top C. A bit strident but all right if your ears are accustomed to factory sirens. Cresty, sing! Come on, sing for momma.”
The result was a screech which made the group wince.
“Shall I remove the bird, madam?” Walters asked with frozen calm, eyeing Alice.
“No, no, he’s most entertaining!” Maria exclaimed. “He’s doing no harm, and at least he’s sociable,” she added grimly, glancing at Pat. But Pat did not seem to notice the statement. Rather indeed, she seemed keyed up to a point of tension, as though wondering what the bird was going to say next.
But thereafter, with true ornithological stubbornness, Cresty became silent.... The meal over, Pat made her excuses and departed hastily. Ten minutes afterwards Maria saw her leaving the house. From the clear vantage point of the terrace she watched her board an uptown bus from the distant stopping point at the street junction.
“Looks like Pat’s got the jumps these days,” Dick commented, watching as the bus started off again. “Queer,” he went on, puzzling. “That was a Number Nine—goes out to East Side. I wonder what the heck Pat can want in that direction?”
Maria waited for a possible answer to the mystery; but there was none forthcoming. Dick merely gave a shrug and glanced at his watch.
“Well, Aunt, if you’re sure there
is nothing I can do for you I’ll hop up to town myself....”
“Don’t worry about me, Richard. Anyway, I have to stay in to see Mr. Johnson.”
“Okay...don’t fall over the rail!”
Maria watched him stride off, then she returned to her contemplation of the roof-tops. Half-detachedly she listened to the clear notes of Janet’s voice floating out on to the terrace as she practiced in the room next to the lounge. It was a pleasant refrain, clear and sweet, with none of the vocal acrobatics usually demanded of a soprano.
“East Side....” Maria fingered her watch-chain and thought aloud. “Night in a dance hall; typewriter with a broken spring— Oh, Walters!”
He came out of the lounge. “Madam?”
Maria studied his unsteady eyes for a moment, then she said:
“Miss Patricia has a typewriter in her room, one with a broken spring: you heard her mention it during breakfast. I’d rather like to see the machine. I am—er—rather expert with springs and I may be able to repair it. I have letters to attend to.”
“I’ll see you have it immediately, madam.”
Alice, sunning herself in a corner, looked up in surprise.
“Maria, dear, just where do your talents leave off?” she asked, smiling admiringly. “I begin to think that I should have become a Headmistress in order to obtain a knowledge of everything.”
“Not everything, Alice. It would be so easy if one knew every thing.”
“Yes....” Alice wrestled with the reply. “Yes, I suppose it would,” she admitted, in a queer voice. Then she went on reading her novel.
Presently Walters silently returned and laid the blue-leather-covered machine on the wicker table, surveyed it dubiously.
“I am afraid it is the mainspring, madam,” he said, tapping the unresponsive space bar. “I remember Miss Patricia asked me if I knew anything about typewriters a few weeks ago—”
“And you don’t?” Maria questioned, looking the machine over.
“Unfortunately not, Madam.... Perhaps I had better have it sent to the repairers?” He cocked his wavering eyes on Alice.
“Yes, yes, you might as well.... No!” Alice seemed to change her mind suddenly. “No, you’d better not. It’s Pat’s responsibility. The child must learn to shoulder her own troubles.”
Maria sighed, her study at an end. “Take it back, Walters. Even my little tricks with typewriters are of no use this time. The mainspring has obviously snapped— Oh, Walters!” He turned at the lounge door. “Yes, madam?”
“I’d like a copy of the New York Times.”
“Certainly, madam....” He paced out gravely with the machine in his hands.
“Silly of Pat to let the wind blow the other copy away,” Alice reflected, tossing her novel aside. “You should have let Walters get you a paper when he asked Dick—~ They may all be sold by now.”
“There is always the public library,” Maria observed calmly.
Alice sighed and shook her head. “I don’t like newspapers, Maria dear. I always think they are so full of crime and murders, don’t you? There are such an awful lot of people in the world doing things they shouldn’t. Aren’t there?”
“How true indeed...!” Maria strolled back to the terrace rail and mused again. A thought was drumming through her mind. The spring she had found in the library had not been from Pat’s typewriter anyway: that was definitely established.
“Dick’s machine? Janet’s portable?” She juggled each thought; then she glanced up and smiled as Janet herself came into view and leaned against the stonework, sunning herself.
“You have a lovely voice, Janet,” Maria remarked. “I have been listening to you.”
“You like it? I’m so glad. I think it’s so hard to tell what a voice is really like when you’re the owner of it. I hear it played back on records, of course, and it sounds quite ordinary to me. I practice most mornings between engagements—sort of oiling up. I start again tomorrow night for a two weeks’ run at the Criterion. Then—” Janet broke off, her dark eyes surprised as she looked round. “Hallo! Where’s Pat gone?”
“She took a bus to East Side,” Maria answered quietly.
“East Side!” Janet looked puzzled. “That’s queer! And why the bus, I wonder? She’s got a new sports car—”
“Which is not perhaps very appropriate for the East Side,” Maria reflected. “The East Side, as I understand it, is pretty similar to our London East End. High-class material not very welcome.”
“Yes, yes, you’re right....” Janet looked up again. “Yes, Walters?”
He looked at Maria. “The newspaper, madam.”
“Oh, thank you, Walters....” She took it, opened it out. Janet lay back on the stonework of the rail and surveyed the front page casually.
“The set-up doesn’t alter much, does it?” she sighed. “A man falls down a well; a girl shot dead; a convict escapes from a prison farm and is still on the run— Well, I’ve a musical score to study. I’ll leave you to your baser passions, Aunt.”
Maria nodded, her attention fixed on the newspaper. Janet’s quick eyes had encompassed the main details on the front page—and it was an identical copy of the page Pat had been so earnestly reading before she had lost the paper through deliberate ‘mischance.’ Of all the items presented the only one with any hope of being applicable was the reference to a convict’s escape from a prison farm.
Maria read carefully, skipping the main details—
“...and the police are now confident that they have a definite clue as to the whereabouts of Arthur Salter, the convict who escaped his guards while on road duty near Jamestown, New York, on the afternoon of June 4, and who has since been at large. This man, serving sentence for fraud, eluded his warders by a clever trick and made a clean getaway, obviously aided by somebody waiting for him on the State highway a mile away, with a car. Despite the dragnet Salter slipped through. But it is now passably certain that the circle is closing in....”
Maria lowered the paper, narrowed her eyes in thought. Then she looked to where Alice sat reading.
“Alice, what was the exact date on which Ralph committed suicide?”
“June the fourth. How well I remember—! But why do you ask?”
“I just wondered, that’s all— But there’s something else, too.” Maria strolled over and sat beside Alice in the swinging hammock chair. “Alice, I’d like to ask you something.... Last night Patricia said she had no love for her father because he had balked her dearest wishes. Later on Janet said that that dearest wish was Patricia’s desire to marry a man who later turned out to be a thief. Just what was the charge against him?”
“Well, it’s a bit involved,” Alice said, thinking. “The young man—I met him once and rather liked him—was employed by Onzi’s Financial Trust. He was a clerk or a secretary, or something— Anyway, it was found that he had embezzled and defrauded company funds for his own uses. His sentence was eight years.... Poor Pat! She was nearly prostrate when the news came out.”
“He was sent to prison then before Ralph died?”
“Of course. But—” Alice looked surprised. “What are you getting at?”
“Just this.... And if nobody else in the family notices it the better perhaps.”
Maria handed the newspaper over and Alice’s hand went to her lips in sudden horror as she read the indicated column.
“Good—good heavens, Maria, this is he! Arthur Salter!”
“I imagined as much,” Maria said grimly. “The same man Patricia wanted to marry.”
“Yes—yes! But she never told us! We never knew he had escaped. Oh, I don’t begin to understand this—.”
“But I think I do,” Maria interrupted. “Listen to me for a moment, Alice.... Doesn’t it occur to you that this young man escaped on the very day during the evening of which Ralph died?”
“Yes, I can see that, but— If anybody knew of the breakaway from the farm it would be Pat, and she never mentioned anything.”
“Do
es that surprise you?” Maria asked. “Think back! Patricia was, by her own admission, out with friends all through the evening during which Ralph met his death. Did Patricia ever say what friends?”
A gradual indignation began to mirror on Alice’s face.
“Certainly she did! In fact the police questioned her about it after Ralph’s death; but several of her friends all verified that she had been with them. They spent the evening touring the high spots in her new sports car.”
Maria began to twirl her watch-chain and stared in front of her.
“Just what are you thinking?” Alice demanded.
“I happen to know schoolgirl friendships,” Maria shrugged. “There is an almost Masonic clanship between schoolgirls, Alice, and it does not end just because schooldays are over. Girls who were pals at school will support each other in trouble in the years that follow. I happen to know that.... I’m not casting aspersions on anybody but I do believe it is quite likely that these young ladies might have been asked by Patricia to say that she had been with them whereas she had really been busy elsewhere.’’
“For instance?” Alice’s voice was surprisingly acid.
“To me it seems obvious. Arthur Salter escaped so easily because a car was waiting for him. Patricia was an intimate friend. Her car was new—and being a sports car, very fast. During the late afternoon and evening of June fourth she was not in the company of friends but was helping the man she loves to escape, obviously knowing of his plan beforehand by some means or other. I do not doubt that he would find ways and means to get his plans to the outside world, possibly even through his lawyer.”
“Really, Maria, this is ridiculous!” Alice exclaimed. “Pat helping young Salter to escape—! She’d never dare! And supposing for a moment that she did, how do you imagine she cheated the police dragnet that was immediately thrown out?”
“I don’t know,” Maria confessed. “But one day I may find out. It is inevitable that the police must know of her connection with Salter prior to his imprisonment, and even if they have not got enough proof to question her openly on the matter they must at least have her under observation. That seems logical enough to me.”
Black Maria, M. A.: A Classic Crime Novel Page 6