Again Maria Brown simply and conclusively did not reply.
Matt said, “Well, then, how about money? Are you supplied with money?”
“Enough,” Maria Brown said.
Matt’s face was hard. “One more question. Are you sure when Conrad spoke to you he did not tell you who killed him?”
“He said only Laura March, that name. Laura March—doctor, that is all he said.”
Matt met Laura’s eyes. He answered the terrified question in her mind. “She had no doubt as to his meaning. And in any event —I’ve got to keep my promise not to turn her over to the police.”
Maria Brown gave Laura an oblique, sliding glance and said nothing. Matt said to Maria Brown, “Later, then—did you telephone to Miss March? I mean before you went to her apartment?”
“Yes, I did,” the woman said flatly. “Once I got myself into a safe place I thought about my child. I was thinking of her all the time, you understand. I had to be sure she was safe. I telephoned to Miss March and she answered but—but then I was afraid to talk. I thought from her voice, it sounded all right, you understand, that no harm had come to Jonny. But I was afraid to talk. I was afraid it would be traced. I was afraid somebody would hear me. I was at one of those pay telephone booths. It was in a public place. I was afraid. I hung up and ran out and I went back to—” she stopped.
“And then you telephoned again?”
“Yes, I did. I told myself this time I would talk to her but again—no, I could not.”
Matt said carefully, “Did you ever speak into the telephone? Did you ever speak Polish, say, into it? Did you ever mention Jonny’s name?”
“No,” Maria Brown said flatly. “No.” She thought for a moment, watching Matt. Then she said, “Somebody did that, is that right? Who was it? Was it the murderer? Was it a man? Was it a woman? Women are trained to this kind of assassination as well as men. Who did that?”
Matt replied, “I don’t know. Somebody telephoned and spoke in Polish. Somebody mentioned Jonny’s name. We don’t know who it was.”
“That should be clear! It is this second man. It is this man calling himself Conrad Stanislowski. He is an impostor. He is a murderer. You’ve got to give me my child.”
Oh, no, Laura thought; not yet! Matt sensed her panic. He came across the room and put one hand on Laura’s shoulder. He said to Maria Brown, “If I assure you that Jonny is safe, will you wait for a few days to see her? She is here, you heard her voice. She is safe.”
“You are trying to trick me.”
“No, I’m not. I’m going to leave you here in my apartment. You are perfectly safe. You can lock the door. Don’t answer any telephone calls. If anybody knocks, don’t open the door. Please think of our position about Jonny. We have to ask you to identify yourself in a way that will satisfy Miss March, the other trustee and Mrs. Stanley. It is our obligation. You understand that. Now —I’m going to leave you here. I want you to think, too, about talking to the police and telling them just what you have told me. But if you wish to leave, if you wish to hide yourself again, you can.”
He looked at Laura. “We’ll get Jonny. I’ll go home with you.”
Laura rose. But at the door Matt turned abruptly back. “There is another question. Did you know a woman by the name of Catherine Miller?”
“No,” Maria Brown said.
“Did you—” Matt hesitated. Then he said, “Did you go to Miss March’s apartment more than once?”
“No,” she said in a flat tone of unequivocal finality. She did not look up. Laura’s last glimpse of Maria Brown showed simply a stolid, silent figure staring at nothing. Matt closed the door of the living room.
“Oh, Matt,” Laura cried, but softly so Maria Brown did not hear. “We should tell the police!”
“I’m doing what I think is right. I’ll get Jonny.”
Laura stood transfixed, listening. There was no sound beyond the closed door to the living room. She heard only Matt in the study speaking to Jonny. “We’ll take the puzzle with us. I’ll put it so the picture you’ve already made won’t break. See, I’ll put it in this box. There—” There was a soft little clatter of the jig-saw puzzle. Presently Matt came out again, Jonny beside him in her red coat, a box clasped under her arm. The door to the living room did not open.
They went down in the elevator. In the taxi Matt talked to Jonny steadily, inventing a story to go with the jig-saw puzzle.
Suppose Maria Brown’s story was true, Laura thought. It explained so much. But it failed to explain so much, too.
When they reached Laura’s apartment Matt first established Jonny in her room, with the jig-saw puzzle. He came back into the living room and stood for a moment, staring absently at the Christmas tree.
“Matt—do you believe her?”
“I don’t know.” He went to the Christmas tree and plugged in the lights. They sprang up, red and green and white, all over the tree, lighting the room with a poignant glow of promise. “Did you believe her?” Matt asked.
“I don’t know. It could have happened like that. And if she is Jonny’s mother—”
“I know. If you believe her, it’s a tragic and terrible story. After all those years of separation and anxiety, she and Conrad had so little time together. No, it’s not nice. On the other hand, is it true? Her manner is so—well, you know, Laura—that flat, toneless voice, that stolid manner, that phlegmatic way of replying. It’s hard to tell whether she’s a tragic and brokenhearted woman, beaten down with tragedy and anxiety—or whether she’s a ruthless and very clever liar. And a murderer. I can’t tell.”
“What about the police?”
“I ought to tell them. I’m a lawyer. It’s evidence. And I think Peabody would believe her statement as to Conrad’s intention in speaking only your name and the word doctor. It’s not news to him; you told him why you went to Koska Street; her statement squares with your own. If he’d heard Maria’s statement first, he might have questioned whether Conrad meant it as—an accusation, the name of his murderer, or as he did mean it. But as it stands I think her evidence as to that would be an advantage in the end. I really do think that, Laura. And I think that she’ll decide to see the police. I don’t think I’m taking much of a chance. If she’s really Jonny’s mother, she’s going to stay there in my apartment and after a while she’ll consent to see the police. An alternative is that she is Jonny’s mother but her story is not true; she simply wants to get hold of Jonny and the money, and she murdered Conrad. In that event I think she’ll disappear but turn up again in a few days, because if she’s going to claim Jonny she’s got to come forward with her identification and credentials. I think I made that clear enough to her. The third alternative, of course, is that she’s in a conspiracy with this second Conrad.”
“Why, then, would she answer your personal notice?”
“To establish herself as Jonny’s mother, perhaps,” Matt said rather doubtfully. “I talked to Peabody this morning. He went to see Conrad the second. She says he’s the murderer, so that doesn’t look like a conspiracy between them. On the other hand, thieves do fall out. Much of her story sounds true; that is that the first Conrad knew her address, went to Koska Street, the landlady was gone, nobody was there; she sent him at once to confirm Jonny’s presence— Yes, that sounds human—true. It does seem to me that she ought to know at least whether the mysterious visitor was a man or a woman. Yet certainly anybody planning murder would not shout out to the world the questions he asked Conrad about Jonny. He wouldn’t have known perhaps that the rooming house was entirely deserted except for Maria. Obviously he didn’t know Maria was there; obviously Conrad purposely didn’t tell him. Always provided her story is true,” Matt said with a rather dejected note to his voice. “There are details that were right—the two glasses the police found, and you saw. There was no bottle of any sort of liquor there. The murderer could have taken that away, wiped the glasses so there would not be fingerprints on them. She told me she left her handkerchief—that
was the handkerchief that Peabody found. That detail has not been, so far as I know, in the newspapers. And her story makes her telephone call to you and then her escape completely logical. All that sounds true.”
“She won’t show you her passport. She won’t tell you where she’s staying.”
“She’s still frightened. I mean—she’s either frightened or she’s giving a very good performance of being frightened.”
“She says she knows nothing of Catherine Miller. She denied that.”
“Yes,” Matt said. “Laura, that scarf. Tell me exactly what Peabody said.”
She told him quietly, her voice seeming to take on something of Maria Brown’s flat and toneless recital.
Matt’s face was like a hard, white mask. “When did you last see the scarf?”
“I think it was the day we went to the movies. I remember wearing a red one yesterday when we went to Doris’, but I don’t remember seeing the white one then.”
Matt rose. “I’m going to talk to Jonny.”
She followed him. Jonny looked up gravely. Suki, sitting on the table and watching, took advantage of Jonny’s distraction, pushed a piece off the table, and sprang to retrieve it. Matt said, “Jonny, yesterday afternoon you opened the door, you let me in, remember? Was anybody else here yesterday? Did you open the door another time?”
Jonny shook her head in a troubled way. “Please?”
“She doesn’t understand,” Laura said.
“I’ll show her.” Matt led the child out into the hall. He opened the door, he closed it. He got out the Polish dictionary. “Nie,” Jonny said, her eyes sad and anxious, “nie.” But then she went to the door, opened it, shook her head, said, “Nie, nie!” closed it, and stood with her hands at her sides.
“All right, Jonny. It’s all right;” Matt said. “Go back to your puzzle.”
The child sighed. Then she trudged along the hall. Matt sighed, too. “It’s no use getting an interpreter.”
“Do you mean she let somebody in—yesterday—when I was asleep?”
“I don’t know. I came in then. Jonny opened the door. You were sound asleep. You didn’t hear me.”
“She would have opened the door for Charlie,” Laura said slowly. “For Doris perhaps. Nobody else, Matt.”
“I’m not so sure. If Stanislowski, I mean Conrad the second, came and spoke to her in Polish— Look here, Laura, has anything at all been moved or—or searched, or is anything missing besides the scarf?”
“No. Not that I—” A small memory struck her. “There was a bird, a toy, a yellow bird Charlie gave her. She fastened it on the tree. It’s gone. I thought Jonny had taken it to play with. But when I looked I couldn’t find it.”
Matt stared at her for a moment. Then he took the Polish dictionary and went to Jonny’s room. Laura followed. A long fifteen minutes later they knew only that the absurd yellow bird was not to be found anywhere.
Jonny was by then biting her lips to hold back tears. Matt took her in his arms. “It’s all right, Jonny. You don’t understand—it’s all right.” But he took her with him to the telephone, and dialed a number.
He asked for Miss Nowak. “Miss Nowak? This is Matt Cosden again. I wonder if you would ask the little girl a question or two right now, over the telephone? Will you ask her who came to see her yesterday afternoon?”
He then gave the telephone to Jonny. “Talk to her, Jonny. To please me—”
Jonny pressed the receiver against her ear. But at the first words Miss Nowak spoke, her little face turned a stony, rigid blank. She shook her head, she stared at the floor, then suddenly she turned and pushed the telephone receiver back at Matt and ran away into the back of the apartment.
Matt said, “Thanks, Miss Nowak. It’s no good,” and hung up. “Well, that’s that. Of course, the fact is anybody could have got in here, I suppose, while you were gone, and taken that scarf. But that yellow bird—why? It suggests Charlie because he gave it to her. But why should anybody want to point to Charlie in just that way? It’s fantastic. It makes no sense. Besides, who would know that Charlie had brought it. Laura, you’re sure it didn’t—oh, fall off, get thrown out? Something like that?”
“I’d have seen it.”
“I suppose so. Still—oh, it probably means nothing. Laura, I’m going to see Peabody.”
“What about Maria Brown?”
“I’ll give her an hour or so to think it over, then I’ll go back and talk to her. Unless,” he said wryly, “she’s disappeared again. I wish I knew whether she’s telling the truth or not. She says that she heard Conrad’s voice, it was very loud and clear, especially after he had had a drink or two. But I think she must have heard the murderer’s voice. No matter how much of the rest of her story is true, I think that part is a lie. I think that she is afraid to put herself in a position to identify the murderer. She’s afraid of revenge on the part of the Polish government party or one of their emissaries. And oddly enough, if she’s lying about that, the lie would make the rest of her story more credible. Are you going out this afternoon with Jonny?”
“Yes. She knows something’s wrong, Matt. She’s frightened. I’ve got to try to distract her.”
“I know,” he said dubiously. “As a matter of fact you ought to get out yourself. But it you do, go where there are crowds. Stay with other people. Take her Christmas shopping.”
But at the door he paused for a moment and went back to Maria Brown. “There’s another important angle to that Brown woman’s story. She said that Conrad did not tell the murderer that he had seen you and Jonny. He talked about Jonny, she says, you heard her. He went on and on, telling incidents of her childhood, that little song, but he didn’t say he had seen her and he didn’t say he had seen you. It must have given the murderer a terrific jolt to discover, after he had obviously left Conrad for dead, that Conrad not only wasn’t dead, but he had talked to Maria Brown and that you had actually gone to the rooming house. Well—my guess is eventually Maria will talk to Peabody. In any event, it’s the only way I see to play it.”
It’s the only way to play it, Laura thought, after he’d gone. Wait like a chess player for the next move. What exactly would the next move be?
The important thing was Jonny—and the troubled, sad look in her face. She went to Jonny, she helped with the puzzle, she cooked Jonny’s favorite lunch, she talked, gaily and constantly, she exerted every effort; by the time Jonny took her nap, Laura had succeeded in coaxing a spontaneous smile and some answering chatter from the child.
About two-thirty she and Jonny took a taxi to the Loop. Christmas shopping, Matt had said.
The day was still heavily overcast. Lights were already on in the shop windows. The traffic was thunderous and heavy. Again the Michigan Avenue bridge was up and they waited, with the throb of motors all around them, the occasional shrill hoot of the taxicabs and the lower yet piercing and eerie moan of a cargo boat making its way between the massive abutments of the bridge, which reared up into the foggy sky, and out to the gray, mysterious reaches of the lake. They had reached a door of the great department store, when Laura discovered again that someone was following them.
THIRTY-THREE
SHE WASN’T SURE OF it at first. She only noted that a taxi stopped behind her taxi as she and Jonny got out. Then she saw that the dimly outlined man’s figure in the second taxi was vaguely familiar. She couldn’t see his face.
She hurried Jonny across the sidewalk, through the revolving door into the lights, the familiar, the crowded and busy atmosphere of the great store.
The dimly seen figure in the taxi had had a bulky dark shape about his shoulders; a widely brimmed hat shielded his face. She had glimpsed that much. Clusters of shoppers intervened now between her and the door.
Murder is dangerous. Be careful.
Murder or attempted murder couldn’t happen then and there, with crowds of shoppers milling about, busy salesgirls, glittering lights. Nothing could happen there. All the same it was pursuit.
&
nbsp; Her heart was thudding. She led Jonny to the nearest escalator, through the swirling, package-laden crowd. They would lose themselves, she and Jonny. They would go to the toy department.
Jonny loved the escalator. She stepped on it promptly; she clutched the moving rail and looked out over the brilliant scene below, with its festive Christmas decorations, huge loops of tinsel and red and green going from pillar to pillar. At the very top Laura risked a look downward. She did not see any dark-coated, foreign-looking figure. She hurried Jonny on around a corner and into the toy department.
The huge toy department was gayly decorated, too, with great festoons of red and gold and green, with Santa Clauses and tinseled Christmas trees. It was packed with shoppers, mothers, fathers, children and more children. Jonny’s eyes widened with excitement.
If there were somebody following them, then it was, it had to be, the second Conrad Stanislowski. What could he do?
He could try to take Jonny from her.
But she could ask for help. She could approach a salesclerk, ask for a manager. What could she say? A man who claims to be this child’s father is following us? Who would believe her? Besides, by that time the shadowy figure would have unobtrusively but completely vanished.
Perhaps she was mistaken.
She ought not to have come to the toy department! It was an obvious place for anybody to search for them.
She had made herself stare fixedly at the dolls on the counter before them; her neck muscles were stiff and rigid with her effort not to look back—and suddenly she could bear it no longer and gave a swift glance back toward the corner near the escalator. A shoulder in a bulky dark overcoat moved swiftly out of sight, away down at the end of the crowded aisle, and behind a huge pillar.
Laura caught Jonny’s hand.
“Come, Jonny. Come—”
Jonny gave her a startled glance and instantly obeyed. They ducked and dodged around other shoppers toward another flight of escalators that wound upward and downward through the great store. They’d go back down to the first floor, Laura thought, in full and panic retreat. They’d take another exit, opposite the door by which they had arrived, on another street entirely, a full block across. There were always taxis on that crowded street. Hurry, she thought. Whoever it was and whatever the motive, it was a surreptitious pursuit; therefore it was dangerous.
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