It is hoped that the many thousand owners of valuable jewelry will be warned by the Lacey-Smythe robbery and see that their gems are consigned to any one of the conventional places of safety, the best, of course, being a safe deposit box, in a bank.
“That article should be a warning to you, Ma’am,” the maid remarked. “At any rate, I took the liberty of renting that safe for the diamonds. It can be returned when it has served its purpose and the fee is very reasonable. Your tea, Ma’am.”
She handed the steaming beverage to her mistress.
“And a cup for yourself.”
“Thanks, Ma’am.”
They drank, nibbling at their toast, and talked in subdued tones.
The great clock in the hall struck eleven.
“It is time for bed, Ma’am,” the maid suggested.
But her mistress demurred.
“Just a few minutes more.”
The clock struck the half-hour, and as it did so, from somewhere in the rear of the house came the muffled clangor of the doorbell.
The two women looked at each other knowingly.
The maid arose and left the room. The sound of her tottering footsteps receded down the hall and gave place to a murmur of voices. Then the fumbling footsteps returned, followed by the tramp of heavier feet, and the maid ushered two men into the library.
They wore derby hats pushed on the backs of their heads, in their teeth were clenched fat black cigars. The taller had his right thumb stuck in the armhole of his vest, disclosing a shiny badge. When he dropped it to his pocket there was a glimpse of grimy adhesive tape.
“Police officers to see you, Ma’am,” the maid announced, her voice quivering.
* * *
—
The taller of the two stepped forward into the light. Across his cheek stretched a livid scar. Behind him, his companion stood shifting his feet uneasily, his eyes traveling furtively about the room, never remaining fixed on one place for more than a split second.
“You are Mrs. Elvira P. Musgrave?” the man with the scar demanded.
The little old lady nodded.
“Well, we’re detectives from the station house around the corner,” he announced, displaying the shield on his vest by a backward flip of his coat.
Behind him his companion duplicated the action.
“The sergeant sent us around about this,” the man with the scar went on, drawing a copy of the Gazette from his pocket and pointing to the paragraph that mentioned the Musgrave diamonds. “Have you seen it?”
Again the little old lady in the chair nodded.
“Well, the sergeant thought those were too valuable jewels to be kept simply in an old desk without any kind of protection—too many burglars about, you know. So he sent us over to keep an eye out for your diamonds until morning, when he suggests you hire a safety deposit box in a bank and put them in it. We’re to wait until they’re safe.”
“That is very kind indeed of you, gentlemen,” the little old lady answered. “Won’t you sit down?”
She indicated the stiff horsehair sofa on the opposite side of the fire, and as the two men sank down upon its creaky springs her maid assisted her to move her own chair so that her face was in shadow. Then the ancient maid crossed to the sofa where the men sat blinking in the direction of the flames.
Without a change of expression she plucked the fat cigars from their mouths and tossed them into the fire. Then she removed an iron hat from each head and slammed it down on its owner’s knees.
“Priscilla!” the horrified mistress exclaimed. “These gentlemen have come to protect the Musgrave diamonds until we can place them in the bank in the morning. You are forgetting yourself. Bring fresh tea and toast.”
The maid shuffled over to the table and began placing the cups back on the tray.
The man with the scar leaned forward.
“Tell me, Mrs. Musgrave, is that story in the paper about your diamonds true? So often they are exaggerated, you know.”
“Oh, yes, indeed, sir,” the little old lady twittered.
The man with the scar turned and surveyed the room until his eyes came to a tall old-fashioned desk in the corner.
“And is that the secretary in which the jewels are kept?” he asked.
“Were kept,” she corrected him. “As soon as my maid read that article in the paper she telephoned a concern that rents safes and had one delivered immediately. There it is”—she pointed—“and the diamonds are in it. But I shall certainly take your advice and have them placed in the bank in the morning.”
Both men followed the direction of her pointing finger and their mouths dropped open. The shifty-eyed one blinked rapidly and the man with the scar looked as though he might have swallowed his teeth.
But the little old lady appeared not to notice.
“Would you like to hear about the Musgrave diamonds?” she asked, folding her hands serenely in her lap.
The men nodded dumbly.
The maid picked up her tray and left the room.
When she returned her mistress was still rambling on. The men sat uneasily on the edge of the sofa. She served tea and toast to them while her mistress continued her chatty monologue.
Outside in the hall the clock struck midnight.
Still the little old lady rambled on.
When the clock finally chimed one, the maid approached her mistress.
“You must go to bed now,” she insisted sternly. “It’s long past your bedtime as it is.”
An expression of relief crossed the faces of the men.
The little old lady arose with reluctance.
“But these gentlemen——” she protested.
“Don’t mind about us, Mrs. Musgrave,” the man with the scar hastened to assure her. “We’ll make ourselves comfortable here until morning—sergeant’s orders.”
The little old lady turned to her maid.
“Perhaps the gentlemen would like something to drink, Priscilla.”
The maid disappeared and returned shortly with a tray containing whisky, soda, and glasses. As she handed it to the man with the scar she noticed a patch of adhesive tape on the ball of his right thumb, and stifled a chuckle.
The little old lady bid her callers good-night, and, assisted by her maid, slowly climbed the stairs to the second floor.
* * *
—
Just as dawn was breaking the man with the scar straightened from a cramped kneeling position before the safe in the library of 493 West 97th Street.
“Damned lucky we thought to bring our tools and a slug of soup,” he muttered to the man with the shifty eyes. “Now throw that wet rug over this here box while I give it a shot.”
He wrapped a pair of wires, leading from a cup-like contrivance attached to the iron door, around the handle of the safe and carried the two loose ends to a distance while his companion covered the box with a heavy wet rug.
“Quick now—everything set?” he snapped, drawing a flashlight battery from his pocket. “I hear a truck.”
The man with the shifty eyes glanced around the closed doors.
“Okay.”
The truck, a heavy one, apparently filled with milk cans, rumbled past.
The man with the scar scratched the ends of the wire on the exposed poles of the battery.
There was a dull thud, lost in the rumble of the truck, and the door of the safe swung open.
At the same moment the door from the hall burst inward and two men, followed by an eager-eyed girl, pushed in to the library.
“There they are, Dan!” the girl cried shrilly. “Get ’em, big boy!”
It was obvious that these men were dicks. There was no mistaking it by the way they went for their guns.
“Big Dan” Murray was in the lead.
For a moment the
man with the scar and his companion stood paralyzed.
“Put ’em up!” Murray bellowed.
* * *
—
As he spoke the door leading from the rear of the house opened and the maid, followed by her mistress, and both with negligée hastily thrown over their old-fashioned night attire, stepped into the library.
The man with the scar saw his chance.
With a sardonic laugh he leaped for the rear door, the man with the shifty eyes half a jump behind.
The two detectives withheld their fire, fearful that a stray shot might take effect on the women.
The little old lady cowered against the wall as the robbers rushed toward them.
But the maid stood her ground. In fact, she took a half step forward and waited flat-footed.
A collision seemed inevitable. The dicks were in pursuit, fearful of finding the maid a complete wreck when they should reach her.
But instead of going down in front of the charge, the unexpected happened.
Shifting with unlooked-for agility the maid’s right fist lashed out, landing smack against the oncoming jaw. The blow seemed to travel only a matter of inches, but the man with the scar went down as though he had suddenly encountered a Mack truck head-on.
The fall of his companion slowed up the man with the shifty eyes for an instant, and in that instant a knife gleamed in his hand. It glimmered upward in a flashing arc directly above the maid’s head.
The dicks were thundering up, but obvious that they would be too late. The maid was doomed.
But she waited unperturbed for the descent of the blade.
It started.
The maid’s right hand flicked out, snaked under the man’s upper arm and her fingers twined about his wrist. Her left hand covered her right, an old jiu-jitsu trick. She pressed forward.
The man’s feet rose in the air and he did a backward spin. There was a sharp snap. He screamed in agony and fell in a limp huddle at the detectives’ feet.
“Pushed too hard,” the maid remarked laconically, dusting off her hands. “Broke his arm I’m afraid.”
Before the astonished detectives could speak she put an arm about her half-fainting mistress’s waist and supported her from the room.
“Well, I’ll be—I certainly will be——” Big Dan Murray stammered as he snapped the cuffs on the two prostrate robbers and jerked them to their feet.
He turned to the girl who had followed them upon their unceremonious entrance.
“Your tip sure was the goods, Gazette,” he chuckled.
“But are these babies the ones?” she asked anxiously. It was Jane Bradley.
Murray pointed to the piece of adhesive tape that decorated the thumb of the man with the scar.
“We’ll probably find a hole made by a certain splinter under that tape,” he remarked. “And by the way,” he turned to the other dick, “just have a look and see what they’ve got on ’em.”
The man stepped forward and went through their pockets.
With a grunt of satisfaction he stepped back, holding something out in his hand.
“The Lacey-Smythe pearls!” Murray exclaimed. “Well, I’ll be damned!”
He turned swiftly on the girl reporter.
“I beg your pardon, Gazette, but tell me—how did you know this was coming off? I sure appreciate the tip-off, but I feel dumb having to be taught my business by a girl reporter.”
Jane Bradley smiled wisely.
“We—I had a hunch that if I planted that phoney about the Musgrave diamonds in the paper it would draw something. This apartment was all a set-up.”
“But the two old dames, Gazette, who are they?”
The girl laughed outright.
“Just a pair of—of actresses we hired for the evening. But what I want to know is this—how long will these babies go up for? I understand they have three previous convictions to their credit—three felonies.”
Dan Murray grinned.
“Well, I should say that by the time we get through pinning safe cracking, carrying concealed weapons, attempted assault with a deadly weapon, and several other things on them neither one will come out of the big house until they carry them out feet first. Does that satisfy you?”
“Perfectly. And now I think I’ll go upstairs and pay off the—actresses.”
Murray detained her a moment more.
“I suppose you want us to suppress the report of this arrest for—how long?”
The girl looked at her watch.
“It’s seven now. Could you hold it till nine? My story’s written and set ready to go. All I can expect is a first edition scoop anyway.”
“Gladly, Gazette, we certainly owe that much to you.”
“You’re an old dear.”
The girl turned and dashed from the room.
* * *
—
Upstairs she encountered the two “old ladies” removing wigs and make-up.
“I want to congratulate you on the finest performance of your career, Miss Devine,” the maid was saying.
Dorothy Devine scrubbed at her face with a sheet of tissue.
“If you should consider turning to the theatre, Madame,” she laughed, “I can assure you of the lead in any one of three plays that I know of. You were marvelous.”
“And I can assure you both,” the girl reporter cut in, “that your two boy friends downstairs can’t possibly get off without life and about a hundred extra years tacked on for good measure.”
“Splendid,” the Madame remarked, “but if the police expect witnesses of this little business I’m afraid you will really have to hire a pair of actresses for Miss Devine and I are going to scram, and that quickly. And you must forget that we have been here at all.”
BAD GIRL: UNNAMED
EXTENUATING CIRCUMSTANCES
Joyce Carol Oates
THE CASE HAS BEEN made that Joyce Carol Oates (1938– ), with a career known for its excellence, popularity, and prolificacy, is the greatest living writer in the world to have not yet been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature (she has been regarded as a favorite by readers, critics, and bookies for about twenty-five years).
Born in Lockport, New York, in the northwestern part of the state, she began to write as a young child, attended Syracuse University on scholarship, and won a Mademoiselle magazine short story award at nineteen. Her first novel, With Shuddering Fall (1964), has been followed by more than a hundred books, including more than fifty novels, forty short story collections, several books for children and young adult novels, ten volumes of poetry, fourteen collections of essays and criticism, and eight volumes of plays; eleven of her novels of suspense were released under the pseudonyms Rosamond Smith and Lauren Kelly. An overwhelming number of her novels and short stories feature such subjects as violence, sexual abuse, murder, racial tensions, and class conflicts. Many of her fictional works have been based on real-life incidents, including violent crimes.
As voluminous as her writing career has been, so, too, has been the extraordinary number of major literary prizes and honors awarded to her, including a National Book Award for them (1969), as well as five other nominations; five Pulitzer Prize nominations; two O. Henry Awards for short stories; and Bram Stoker Awards for the novel Zombie (1995) and the short story “The Crawl Space” (2016). Among her bestselling books have been We Were the Mulvaneys (1996), which was an Oprah Book Club selection and a film released in 2002 with Beau Bridges and Blythe Danner, and Blonde (2000; 2001 film with Poppy Montgomery), a novel based on the life of Marilyn Monroe. The 1996 film Foxfire (starring Cathy Moriarty, Hedy Burress, and Angelina Jolie) was an adaptation of Oates’s 1993 novel Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang.
“Extenuating Circumstances” was originally published in Sisters in Crime 5, edited by Marilyn Wallace (New York, Berkley, 1992).
JOYCE CAROL OATES
BECAUSE IT WAS A MERCY. Because God even in His cruelty will sometimes grant mercy.
Because Venus was in the sign of Sagittarius.
Because you laughed at me, my faith in the stars. My hope.
Because he cried, you do not know how he cried.
Because at such times his little face was so twisted and hot, his nose running with mucus, his eyes so hurt.
Because in such he was his mother, and not you. Because I wanted to spare him such shame.
Because he remembered you, he knew the word Daddy.
Because watching TV he would point to a man and say Daddy—?
Because this summer has gone on so long, and no rain. The heat lightning flashing at night, without thunder.
Because in the silence, at night, the summer insects scream.
Because by day there are earth-moving machines and grinders operating hour upon hour razing the woods next to the playground. Because the red dust got into our eyes, our mouths.
Because he would whimper Mommy?—in that way that tore my heart.
Because last Monday the washing machine broke down, I heard a loud thumping that scared me, the dirty soapy water would not drain out. Because in the light of the bulb overhead he saw me holding the wet sheets in my hand crying What can I do? What can I do?
Because the sleeping pills they give me now are made of flour and chalk, I am certain.
Because I loved you more than you loved me even from the first when your eyes moved on me like candle flame.
Because I did not know this yet, yes I knew it but cast it from my mind.
Because there was shame in it. Loving you knowing you would not love me enough.
Because my job applications are laughed at for misspellings and torn to pieces as soon as I leave.
Because they will not believe me when listing my skills. Because since he was born my body is misshapen, the pain is always there.
Because I see that it was not his fault and even in that I could not spare him.
The Big Book of Female Detectives Page 213