Lullaby of Murder

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  “I will. How about your work?”

  “In progress. Julie, you will go to see Fran, won’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Please give her my sympathy. I’ll write to her myself. But do what you can for her—for the both of us.”

  She was tempted to say that she felt it incumbent on her, for those words from Jeff had stung as no words of Tony’s ever had. But all she said was, “I will.”

  JULIE WENT DOWNSTAIRS for the newspaper as soon as she got off the phone. It would have pleased Tony to know that he had made Page One of the Times, she thought upon seeing it.

  From the paper Julie learned that Inspector Joseph Fitzgerald interrogated both Mrs. Alexander and her daughter. The daughter had failed to reach her mother with a message from Alexander saying that he would be delayed. Alexander returned to the office after attending a cocktail party at Gracie Mansion. And Mrs. Alexander, after waiting a half hour for him at a midtown restaurant, left and went directly to her flower shop on Lexington Avenue. The police reached her there at midnight.

  Alexander had been shot at close range, apparently with his own revolver, but not by his own hand. His body was discovered shortly after eleven P.M., when the cleaning crew detected a strong odor of gunpowder outside his office and alerted the security police.

  Julie could almost feel the apartment’s quietness; there was not even the usual hum of morning traffic. It was Saturday, she realized, and for a disoriented instant she enjoyed the thought of not having to go into the office. Wake up, Julie. It’s nightmare time again.

  TEN

  THERE HAD BEEN A time when the Alexanders were the only friends of Jeff’s whom Julie enjoyed visiting. That was mostly Fran’s doing. Fran accepted her in her own right, not simply as Jeff’s wife. She sympathized with Julie’s assorted failures and tended to discount them as expecting too much of herself too soon. It was to Fran—and only to Fran, outside of Dr. Callahan, that Julie was able to say, My whole trouble is that Jeff expects too little. She had been fonder of the Alexander apartment—the penthouse in a turn of the century Park Avenue building—than of her own home. There were plants and books and modern pictures, including a portrait of Tony at his most sardonic, one eye almost closed, at which she always found herself winking back. The memory of those cherished times not so long ago flooded in on her as she went up in the elevator. Even the elevator had used to please her with its little round seats to be lowered from the wall for a leisurely ascent.

  People were scattered through the apartment and on the terrace. The sun was shining, a welcome change in weather. A uniformed maid was pouring Bloody Marys.

  She found Fran propped up on a chaise longue in the master bedroom accepting condolences. With a shawl over her shoulders and a mohair blanket over her knees, Fran didn’t merely look older, she looked elderly. Her face was strained, her hair peppery and dull. When she saw Julie her eyes seemed to brighten and once more Julie wondered at herself for not having seen her for so long. But she did know why: She was not one ever to take the initiative. If Fran had called her she would have come on the instant. Now she waited her turn to speak to her.

  The room had been thoroughly tidied, the king-size bed made up as though forever. A great bouquet of red and white carnations stood on the bedside table. From Fran’s shop? The shop was called The Basil Pot. She grew herbs as well as plants, buying only her cut flowers on the wholesale market. The Basil Pot was named after a poem by Keats that, as Julie discovered on a reading she could have done without, was pretty macabre: a lover’s head is buried in the pot.

  Fran took both Julie’s hands and pulled her down to kiss her. Her grip was fierce and boney and she held on until she had drawn Julie down beside her on the chaise. She smelled of earth and maybe even of sweat; her fingernails were dirty. Nothing seemed left of the chicness Julie had so admired, and her eyes were tired and bloodshot with no particular color of their own.

  “It shouldn’t have taken something like this to bring you here,” she said, and the tears welled.

  “I’m very sorry,” Julie said.

  “I haven’t had much sleep and I don’t seem able to stop crying.”

  “What can I do?” Julie asked.

  “There doesn’t seem to be anything. It’s all been done. Are there police outside, did you notice?”

  “I didn’t see any. Jeff called from Paris. He’s terribly concerned. He wanted you to know.”

  “I do know,” Fran said and smiled a little. “Has he been away for long?” Which showed how much communication there had been between her and Tony.

  “Since Wednesday.”

  “Tony would never go anywhere outside New York.”

  “Not even Staten Island,” Julie said.

  “He was afraid his life would turn out to have been a dream, that he’d wake up back on the farm.”

  “Isn’t it crazy,” Julie said, “how little we know one another?”

  “Ha! Sometimes the more intimate, the less.”

  People were standing in line waiting to speak to her, but she kept her eyes down to delay acknowledging them. “The police keep coming at me. And at my daughter. I’m surprised we’ve had this much privacy.” She paused and then, as though reminding herself, “I don’t think you’ve met Eleanor, have you?”

  “No.”

  “She’s here…somewhere.”

  “I’ll find her,” Julie said.

  “Tom Hastings called this morning.” Hastings was the executive editor of the New York Daily. “He wanted to know what I thought about having the column go on—perhaps with you and Tim. I said I thought it was a fine idea.” She spoke slowly as though an inner clock had run down.

  “Thank you,” Julie said. She couldn’t imagine Tony taking to the idea at all.

  “I think you’re supposed to call the office. Or Hastings’ office. I forget. There will be a message out there.”

  “I’d better go and let other people have a word with you,” Julie said. “It isn’t fair not to.”

  Fran looked up at her. “You still believe in fairness?” Then she gave Julie’s arm a squeeze. “You’re right, and I may need all my friends. Will you come back this afternoon?”

  Julie promised.

  She found Eleanor in the guest room and knew her instantly to be Fran’s daughter, the set of the eyes, the high, rounded forehead. But the face was longer, the features severe, ascetic-looking. Tall and a bit awkward, the girl was trying to help old Mary Ann Stokes of The Village Voice into her coat.

  “No flowers,” Eleanor said. “He despised flowers unless he could pick them himself.” Which was nonsense when you thought about it. Or metaphor: that possibility was intriguing.

  “I’ll make a donation to the anti-nukes in Tony’s name,” Miss Stokes said, on her way, “since obviously gun control was not in his purview.”

  Julie’s eyes and Eleanor’s met and told that both of them appreciated the gallows humor. When the girl smiled a vein appeared down the center of her forehead. Large dark eyes, no tears, brown hair cut short. She seemed not to know what to do with her hands and finally stuck them in the belt of her jacket.

  “You’re Eleanor, aren’t you? I’m Julie.”

  The young woman nodded and the vein became even more pronounced.

  “I don’t know why we haven’t met before,” Julie said.

  “I’m never here for long at a time.”

  “Are you in school?” Julie found the going difficult.

  “Veterinary college. I’m good with animals.”

  “I’ll bet you are,” Julie said. “I’ve heard that’s one of the hardest schools to get into.”

  “Especially Cornell.”

  “I’m sorry for what’s happened here,” Julie said.

  “Are you?”

  Which brought a desultory conversation to a dead halt. “I ought to make a phone call,” Julie murmured.

  “You’re supposed to call the office,” Eleanor remembered. “What I meant was that the
police have gone away. They were here all night asking the same questions over and over.”

  “They do that,” Julie said.

  “Do you think they’ll come back again?”

  “Until they know what actually happened to Tony, I’m afraid so,” Julie said.

  “And what if they never find out?”

  “I suppose they would go away in time. May I use the phone in here?” It was on a table between twin beds.

  “Please,” Eleanor said. “Would you like coffee? I’ll bring it to you.”

  “No, thank you.”

  “I know: orange juice!” So Fran and her daughter had spoken of her.

  While Julie was dialing, Kate Wylie of the drama desk came in looking for the bathroom.

  Julie pointed to the bathroom door and said, “I hope meeting you at funerals doesn’t get to be a habit.”

  “That’s right. We met last night, didn’t we? Who’d ever have thought…”

  Tim Noble answered the phone and Julie turned from Wylie with an apologetic sign. “Where are you, sweetheart?” Tim wanted to know.

  “Christ! Don’t call me sweetheart. You sound like Tony.”

  “Sorry, Julie, but I don’t know whether I’m high or low. Both. I haven’t had any sleep. Hastings wants to see both of us and he isn’t going to wait much longer. Please come now before he changes his mind. He wants the column to go on. The police let me in here to wait for your call. It’s weird, like a thousand years since I was here last.”

  “I’m on my way,” Julie said.

  “Don’t walk, for God’s sake.”

  While Julie was amending her lipstick Eleanor brought her a glass of orange juice. “Are you leaving?” the girl said, disappointed.

  “I’ll come back later, and if there’s any way I can help with the arrangements, let me know.”

  “There won’t be any arrangements. Just a messenger with ashes.”

  Tony, death-size, Julie thought, and felt a chilling brush with reality.

  Eleanor drifted from the room when Kate Wylie came out of the bathroom. “Who’s that?” Wylie wanted to know.

  “Fran’s daughter.”

  “Spooky, isn’t she?”

  Julie said, “How was Trish Tompkins last night?”

  “Marvelous. She is Little Dorrit. I intended to give Tony a ring about her. I can’t believe he’s gone…” Kate took a look at her own faded beauty in the mirror and grappled for her lipstick. “Are you staying on with the Daily? You should go see her and remember who told you first, hear?”

  “What happened to the original Little Dorrit?”

  “Abby Hill. Appendicitis. She’ll be going back in in a couple of weeks. Which is why you should go see Trish now.”

  “Thanks,” Julie murmured. What she resolved to do was to find out where Abby was having her appendectomy and visit her.

  ELEVEN

  IN SPITE OF TIM’S exhortation, Julie walked. It gave her fifteen minutes in which to contemplate whether or not she wanted a column of her own—half her own. Very few people would think her in her right mind to even hesitate accepting. Tim had called her sweetheart, à la Tony, already into the fantasy. Like Juanita playing teacher. She was aware of the change in herself in the year she had worked on Tony Alexander Says…. Cynicism was something she had affected in her teens, the epitome of being grown up. But that was a few yesterdays ago and she now considered cynicism a cheap shot, but one she often took just the same.

  She kept going back in her mind to her story of Butts and the dance marathon. The police would now ferret out the connection between Butts and Tony, if there was one—among Butts, Phillips and Tony, if there was one. Jeff was probably right: it wasn’t incumbent on her…damn him. But whatever the source of Tony’s wrath with her, he had raised a question she had to answer: Did you really gut care? She had cared more about her smart-ass portrait of Butts. That was the problem. She had felt superior and that simply was not allowed. Then, as though to justify her portrayal of the man as ridiculous, she had grooved on the city” real estate. And without having properly done her homework, she had exposed the package to Tony. Jeff, in her position, would have known whether Tony was killing the piece or simply knocking her off the assignment, and he’d have known why. She was about as prepared to carry on a newspaper column as she was to birth a baby.

  Tim had already gone down to Tom Hastings’ office, a cubby hole off the Editorial Room. Hastings looked like a sportscaster, breezy, sleek hair, tweeds. Electronic apparatus seemed to be seeking communication, but no one paid the slightest attention. Very hard on Julie’s nerves, for she was trying without much success to drag herself into the computer age. Miss Page, whose prep school she had attended, kept telling her girls that computers were a fad, like technocracy was when she was their age. Hastings rose and shook hands, as did Tim whose face was flushed all the way to his floppy ears.

  “We’ve got it pretty well worked out if you agree,” Hastings said. How was she not going to agree, with Tim’s eyes as eager as bubbles and himself about as fragile?

  She tried to take in Hastings’ outline of the operation: the column would run three days a week instead of Tony’s five; to be called Our Beat with Formerly Tony Alexander Says…in smaller type and their names in still smaller type, Tim’s first, he being the senior partner; all copy to be cleared by the Legal Department and then by the city editors; there were other restrictions and qualifications. They were to finish out the month in the fifteenth floor office since Tony had paid the rent, sublet it, and then work among the common folk in the Editorial Room.

  “A month’s trial, and if it works we’ll go to three months. After that we can talk.”

  Tim explained to her with annoying eagerness that they would be going on at their same salaries.

  “How many people your age get an opportunity like this?” Hastings added. “It took Tony years to build his reputation.”

  Exactly, Julie thought. Who had ever heard of Tim Noble or Julie Hayes? Therefore, why? Why not some established personality? What she said was: “What about a twenty percent cost of living increase?”

  Hastings looked offended. “The cost of living hasn’t increased that much.”

  “Ours will.”

  He laughed, which ought to be worth something, Julie thought.

  “And what about Alice Arthur who’s been everybody’s secretary?”

  “She comes out of your cost of living increase.”

  For one month, for three months…Julie still wondered why. Then, as they were leaving his office, Hastings said, “Julie…find out what happened to Tony for us.”

  That put things in a more understandable perspective. And made it incumbent on her to participate in the investigation.

  THE POLICE SEAL had been affixed to the Alexander office door. They went across the hall to the borrowed office of Hale and Kister where Lieutenant Marks was going through Tony’s appointment book with Alice Arthur. Marks invited them to sit in and contribute anything they thought might be useful.

  Alice looked much as she did most days: neat, efficient and so discreet it would make you scream. About the only personal thing Julie knew about her was that she got terrible cramps during her period and took massive doses of Midol for them. Tony had once remarked that he could prescribe something better than Midol. What, Alice had wanted to know. Do you really want me to tell you? Whereupon she had shouted no and burst into tears. Julie was sure Tony had never made a pass at Alice.

  Alice kept deferring nervously to Tim or Julie with everything she said. Marks finally interrupted. He proposed to send out for coffee; then, when he looked at his watch he offered hamburgers. It was well past noon.

  Alice was on her feet at once. Marks waved her down and put a rookie detective in charge of lunch. He gave him a twenty dollar bill. His attitude had changed since Julie’s interrogation. The aggressiveness had toned down. Or maybe he was just tired. Or maybe the suspicion that Fran Alexander was implicated and the fact that a higher
echelon detective was in charge there eased the pressure on him.

  Julie wanted to know how serious their suspicions were. “I saw Mrs. Alexander this morning,” she said.

  Marks didn’t take the bait.

  “Is she really a suspect in Tony’s murder?”

  Marks looked at her with tired eyes. “If Inspector Fitzgerald says so, Mrs. Hayes.”

  “Okay.”

  Marks put his feet up on a magazine table, a copy of Architectural World beneath them. “Let’s go at it this way,” he said. “Let’s take it from the top of yesterday and see how it rolls for everybody. Alexander was the first person in the office, right? And that in itself was unusual.”

  “Unless he slept over on the couch,” Alice said. “He did that once in a long while.”

  “When last?”

  “Maybe the night before last, but I’m not sure.” She was blushing, but you couldn’t tell much from Alice’s blushes.

  Marks went on: “He was at his desk when you arrived, reading what turned out to be Julie’s story.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did Alice know he kept a gun in the copy box?” Julie asked.

  “Yes,” Alice answered for herself. “But the only other person who knew it was Mrs. Alexander.”

  “To the best of your knowledge,” Marks cautioned. “Then Tim arrived. Then Julie; and before she got to her desk he started criticizing the article.”

  “Alice, do you know what he did with it?” Julie asked. “Did he put it in his pocket, his desk or where?”

  “I didn’t see. I heard the drawer bang and I took for granted he put it away in his desk, but I didn’t look around.”

  “Much safer,” Tim said. “Lot’s wife and that sort of thing.”

  “About eleven,” Marks continued, “Julie left and Tim went downstairs with her. When he returned, Alexander gave him a rewrite job. He was still at it when Alexander went to lunch. Alice went shortly afterwards. She returned in forty minutes, at which time Tim gave her some typing and went off to The New York Aquarium to a…” Marks raised his eyebrows. “…Save the Whales luncheon. Alexander came back at two, still in a bad mood, and called Mrs. Alexander to bring the carrying case and her own revolver and pick him up to go for an hour’s target shooting. There was discussion about ammunition.” Marks, who’d been consulting his notebook throughout, turned to the secretary. “Miss Arthur, give us the phone conversation that followed, as you remember it.”