“Why not?”
“Well, for one thing it was not fair to Mrs. Stanley. Conrad Stanley had never so much as seen this nephew. I could understand his motive but I really didn’t think it was fair to Mrs. Stanley. In a way I didn’t think it was fair to Laura, either. She had been like a daughter to Stanley for many years. I really felt that he ought to have provided for her.”
“He did provide for me,” Laura said. “He couldn’t have been more generous. He was like a father to me! He educated me. He gave me something nobody can take away from me, a way to earn my own living.”
Lieutenant Peabody gave her a curious glance, as if he doubted her sincerity; she thought, how noble that sounds, how pretentious; yet it’s all true.
Charlie said dryly, “Nevertheless I thought that Conrad ought to have left you a sum of money outright. Of course, he knew that there was a very strong chance that his nephew would never turn up and that, therefore, you would have a sizable sum of money. Doris would have her third of it. I would have a third, too. You’d have had to know Conrad Stanley to understand him, Peabody. All this, his will, and what we assume to be his motives, are comprehensible to anyone who knew Conrad.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Lieutenant Peabody said shortly. “You said you disapproved of the will.”
“I did disapprove of it. I didn’t think it quite fair to his wife or to Laura and I didn’t think it was a sensible thing to do. I thought it was going to be a tiresome business. It seemed to me the kind of thing that any good legal adviser would have strongly advised Conrad Stanley against. I thought it invited trouble—and I was right. However, this is the way things have worked out. Jonny is here and she is undoubtedly Conrad Stanislowski’s child. So therefore it is our duty to carry out the provision of the will.”
“And you agree, Stedman, that this fund should be turned over to Jonny to be continued until she is of age? Or rather did you agree to it before this man arrived this afternoon?”
Again Charlie paused to consider the question and all its angles. Then he said, “I’ll be frank with you, Lieutenant. I did agree and I didn’t. Mrs. Stanley is a little against it; you can see her point of view. She still feels that it was unfair to her. I can sum up my own opinion this way: if Mrs. Stanley and Miss March agreed to continue the fund, then I would have agreed to it. I rather think —” He paused for a moment and looked at Laura. “You’re not going to like this, Laura. But I rather think if Doris had held out strongly against it, I would have been a little inclined to be on her side. She was Conrad’s wife. However, no matter what the decision was I would be in favor of taking care of Jonny. I’m sure that’s what Conrad would have wanted us to do. I’m not sure that I would be in favor of giving Jonny this very large sum. You, Laura, are determined to have it continued for Jonny.”
“Yes,” Laura said, “Conrad would have wanted it.”
Charlie nodded. “Perhaps you are right,” he said equably. “In any event this discussion is beside the point now. Conrad Stanislowski is here. We’ll have to do everything we can to confirm his claims. But in my opinion, there’s really no question of his identity. And in the meantime—I know how you feel about this, Laura, too, but I feel that we’ll have to let him have the child. It’s the only humane and sensible thing to do. They’ve been separated for two years. He loves her, she’s his child.”
“No! Charlie, please. Not yet. Let’s wait.”
Peabody said abruptly, “Where were you, Stedman, the afternoon following the Koska Street murder?”
“Where—” Charlie looked startled. Then he gave a short laugh. “Another alibi? I think—yes, I’m sure I was at my club again. It’s getting to be a habit with my approaching age; I usually go to my room after lunch and rest. The doorman in the elevator must have seen me but, of course,” Charlie said with an edge to his voice, “as you have pointed out, there’s a side entrance. However, I assure you I didn’t follow Laura and Jonny, if that’s what you’re getting at. If I wanted to see them all I had to do is come up here and ring the bell!”
“Was it Stedman, Miss March?” Peabody asked imperturbably. “Was it Cosden?”
“No! That is—I told you—I couldn’t see his face but—”
“Was it by any chance Stanislowski?”
TWENTY-EIGHT
STANISLOWSKI, LAURA THOUGHT. If he had arrived in Chicago before he said he had arrived, he could have found her address and then attached himself to her and Jonny as they left the apartment. She said slowly, “I’m not sure. It might have been, but—” She tried to dredge up same salient and distinguishing feature from her memory of that ubiquitous figure. It remained only the shadowy, distant shape of a man. “I don’t know.”
Lieutenant Peabody turned to Stedman. “I asked you if you thought it could have been Stanislowski who talked to you on the phone the morning when Miss March went out with us to the rooming house.”
“And I answered you, Lieutenant Peabody,” Charlie said. “I don’t think it was the same man. You heard him. He flatly denies it.”
Lieutenant Peabody turned back to Laura, “That’s all that happened? He didn’t approach you, didn’t speak to you. You just saw a man who took the same route you took around the park.”
“Yes,” Laura said, “but he—he was always there, wherever we went. And then I thought he was in a taxi that followed us.”
“Did you see him clearly?”
“No, no—there was just a figure in the back seat.”
“So you aren’t at all sure that anybody followed you?”
“Yes,” Laura said defiantly.
But it sounded weak even to her own ears. There was a short but skeptical silence. Then abruptly Peabody rose and started for the hall, picking up his coat and hat as he went. At the door, however, he paused. “Miss March, when you make up your mind to tell me exactly why you are so sure that the first man was Stanislowski—let me know,” he said almost solemnly and went away.
Charlie had followed him to the door. He said, “Good night,” closed the door and came back. Laura could almost see his astute mind leaping like quicksilver to the exact meaning of the Lieutenant’s words. He sat down, however, in a leisurely way. He settled his neat tie; he took a cigarette from the little silver dish on the table beside him and lighted it. Finally he said, “Peabody believes that murdered man was still alive when you got there. What did he say to you before he died?”
“He was dead. I told the police that.”
The Lieutenant had not believed her. Neither, she realized suddenly, did Charlie. He said quietly, “Laura, you were obstinate about Stanislowski this afternoon. You took the child away. You refuse to let him have her. That’s not like you. He has not had an easy time, that’s clear. Reunion with his child must have been his goal, his dream, his hope. I am cautious; I’m not easy to convince; I’m aware of my responsibility to Jonny and to Conrad Stanley. I think he should have the child now. We can straighten out all the details later.”
“No—”
“You must have some reason for refusing.”
She had none, nothing that would convince him or anybody. She said desperately, “Charlie, if I knew anything—anything at all, I’d tell the police.”
Charlie considered that, too, deliberately, and again he didn’t believe her. “Maybe,” he said, “maybe not. You are usually a very reasonable young woman, Laura. Remember, I’ve known you since you were a little girl. I’ve known you better since we’ve shared this rather onerous chore. I’ve always thought you were a very level-headed young woman. I don’t think you’d do anything without a reason. It’s possible that you may have some notion of trying to solve this thing yourself. I don’t really believe that, I think you are too smart. But there is something that you’re not telling anybody.”
“No.”
“Then why are you so determined not to give up the child? You must believe that this first man was Stanislowski in spite of everything. And your whole attitude is—different, Laura. I don’t understan
d it. Of course, you may realize that an accusation of murder is a very serious thing. So you may have some notion of trying to prove something, yourself, before you tell the police.”
A kind of weary anger flicked her. She said with sharp impatience, “Charlie, you want me to give up Jonny. I won’t. Not now. I have to think, I have to decide what to do. I’m not going to talk about it!”
She rose. Charlie eyed her for a moment, then he put out his cigarette and rose, too. “All right,” he said, “I’ll not try to persuade you.”
She followed him into the little hall where the mirror reflected her own figure and Charlie as if there were four in the room instead of two. He took up his hat and overcoat and opened the door. Down the corridor the elevator stopped and two women, furred and gloved, emerged, chatting of a moving picture they had seen. They saw Charlie and Laura standing in the open door and instantly silence fell between them, their eyes sharpened. They walked on and around the corner toward another apartment.
The evening papers lay in the hall outside the door. They had now enormous headlines. The Stanislowski murder. Charlie bent, picked them up, and glanced at the headlines.
“The whole story’s here at last. They’re making a big thing of it. It’s the Stanley name.” He handed the papers to Laura. “I ought to tell you, Laura, that murder is something dangerous. Be very careful.”
Fear again touched her as if it had cold fingers. She said, defying it, “I’m not afraid. Besides Matt’s left me his gun.” She put the papers with their great black and red headlines on the hall table. She opened the drawer; Matt’s revolver gleamed coldly within it. Charlie lifted his eyebrows. “Good,” he said. “Well, good night, Laura.”
After he’d gone she bolted the door; she made one of her many reassuring trips back to the kitchen to be sure that that door was bolted and the chain was securely fastened across it. Jonny was sound asleep. She came back to the living room. The talk with Peabody and Charlie plucked at her nerves.
Perhaps all of them, Matt and Doris, too, believed that she must have some sound, some convincing reason, something other than weak and unreasonable instinct, for believing that the murdered man had been in fact Conrad Stanislowski.
And Peabody had said frankly that her belief in the first Conrad’s claims constituted a possible motive for murder. Surely Peabody would need more convincing evidence than that for a murder charge.
She took what comfort she could from the fact that Peabody had questioned Charlie about his lack of an alibi for the time of Conrad Stanislowski’s murder. He had questioned Doris, of course, and Matt. And he had questioned all of them concerning the murder of Catherine Miller. So that meant that Peabody did not have a strong case against her, Laura, didn’t it? He didn’t have a case which left no loopholes; he did not have what was called jury evidence. So that must mean that the investigation was not at an end. And that Peabody was not going to arrest her, not now.
Arrest her, she thought again, with incredulity. It was not possible. Murder wasn’t possible either, not in the orderly circumference of her life. Yet it had touched her twice.
The black headlines of the newspapers leaped at her. The story had blown up into full prominence. That was, as Charlie said, because of the Stanley will. She read her own name with again a feeling of disbelief, yet again the black and white of the newsprint seemed to set a kind of authenticity upon it, too. Miss Laura March had discovered the body. The murdered man had claimed to be a nephew of Conrad Stanley. Miss March had been his ward, according to the newspaper story, and the daughter of an old friend. She had been caring for Conrad Stanley’s great-niece, Jonny Stanislowski, the daughter of, presumably, the murdered man. His identity, however, was still not established. A date for the inquest would be announced, shortly.
There followed a résumé of the Stanley will: Doris’ name, Charlie Stedman’s name, her own. Matthew Cosden, Mrs. Stanley’s lawyer, had discovered the child, in Vienna, and brought her to Chicago. It was all at once an important, a sensational news story.
She thought of the glances the two women who had come out of the elevator had given her as she stood talking to Charlie; avid glances, sharp with curiosity.
There was, of course, no mention of the new Conrad Stanislowski. These were the early evening papers. That would probably be in the morning edition.
If the first man really had been Conrad, then of course the second man, the man who arrived that day, had to be an impostor.
Suppose he had murdered the first Conrad! Suppose he had taken the real Conrad’s papers to support his claim, a false claim, to Jonny and the money! But how would he have known about the Stanley will? How would he have known all the circumstances of the first Conrad’s life? How would he have known the background, which dovetailed exactly with the story the first Conrad had told, and with what they knew of him?
And besides, the second Conrad had a passport showing his own photograph. There was no question of that.
But more convincing than anything, Jonny had recognized him. I’m wrong, Laura thought; I’ve got to be wrong. But I’m not going to let him have Jonny. Not yet.
The little French clock had struck ten, its tinkling chime sounding hurried and breathless, as if fright were contagious, when Matt came. He brought with him a middle-aged woman, dark and heavy with a faint black mustache, who, he explained, spoke Polish. He introduced her; she was Miss Nowak. And she was to question Jonny. There was all at once a subtle difference about Matt.
It was nothing Laura could analyze; nothing she could describe, only a kind of tensely restrained energy, like latent electricity before a storm begins. He brought Jonny in, drowsy and pink-cheeked. And Miss Nowak questioned Jonny for over an hour.
Clearly Matt had coached the Polish woman in the questions she was to ask; they were in all probability much the same questions which Peabody had already asked Jonny through the interpreter he had brought. Again none of the questions produced any clear results.
The sturdy little figure in blue pajamas, red bathrobe and white bunny slippers began to droop against Matt’s arm. But Jonny still at certain questions lowered her head and replied, “Nie—nie.”
At last Miss Nowak turned to Matt with a hopeless shrug of her massive shoulders. “She only says, no. She refuses to speak of her father. She refuses to speak in Polish at all, Mr. Cosden. That’s all she’ll say, no, no. Yet I’m sure she understands me.” She hesitated, looking at the child, and then said, “I think that you are right, Mr. Cosden. I think that she has been taught to answer no questions which have, shall I say, an official character. Perhaps it would be truer to say, no questions a stranger asks her. There’s really no more I can do. Whenever I mention her father—” She shrugged again.
There was a moment of silence. Jonny scuffed her white slipper along the rug. Her round little face, with the flush of sleep on her cheeks, was a guarded, complete blank, but as the silence lengthened, suddenly she gave a long, weary sigh.
Matt sighed, too, as if he was about to force himself to do something he did not wish to do. He gave a quick nod at Miss Nowak, rose, lifted Jonny in his arms and swung her up high. At the same time Miss Nowak burst unexpectedly into song. She had a deep, tuneless voice but the song was recognizable. “Krakowiaczek cyją w Krakowem się rodzil—”
It was the song the man calling himself Stanislowski had sung that afternoon. But this time Jonny only gave Miss Nowak a bewildered, troubled look and buried her face in Matt’s shoulder.
He glanced at Laura over the child’s brown head. “It means ‘I’m a little Cracovian. I was born in Cracow.’ ”
Miss Nowak said in a pedantic way, “It is a Cracovian song, an old one, very well known. It sprang up during the division of Poland. Most people of my country know that song—”
Jonny buried her head still deeper in Matt’s shoulder, both arms tight around his neck. He gave her a reassuring hug and put her down. She stood, both chubby hands on the arm of the chair, looking down.
Mat
t turned to Laura. “What would you think of asking Miss Nowak to come here and stay for a few days? Perhaps, as Jonny grows accustomed to her, she’ll talk.” He hesitated. “It may not work. But it’s a chance.”
They had talked of an interpreter when Jonny came to live with Laura, thinking it might cushion the child’s first weeks in a strange country. Laura had been against it; it would have been a little difficult to find such a, person; and, in fact, after a few days had passed, Laura had found that instead of language being a barrier between her and Jonny, it had become a game, a point of mutual interest, something new and engrossing for Jonny to learn. A pleasant little pattern of conversation had developed at once; Laura had made it a custom to talk while she and Jonny were together, speak of what she was doing, call things by their names and point; Jonny would repeat after her, soap, sugar, dish, cat, drink, milk. Until the arrival of the first Conrad, language had not constituted a barrier between them.
But now it was very important that there should be no barrier at all. And Matt’s plan might work. Laura turned to Miss Nowak. “Will you do that, Miss Nowak? Can you come tomorrow?”
There was a gleam of interest in Miss Nowak’s eyes. Almost certainly Miss Nowak had read the newspapers. But she had lessons to give the next day, she said; they would understand that she was obliged to keep her appointments. “Perhaps the day after tomorrow? Would that help you?”
“That would help,” Matt said. He went with her to the door and gave her a bill which she tucked into a brown handbag. She turned back to say politely to Laura, “Good night, Miss March,” and she smiled at Jonny. “Dobra noc, Jonny.” Jonny’s eyes lifted startlingly blue, between black eyelashes. She did not reply.
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