Curtain for a Jester

by Frances Lockridge

  Bill went down to his car. He drove toward Brooklyn.

  There were lights in almost all the comfortable houses, set back with decent reserve on either side of the comfortable street in Forest Hills. Cars stood against the curb in front of some of the houses, and in the driveways of others—sensible, family cars; cars for shopping, for driving to the station, for unhurried vacation trips in the summer. Parked in front of the home of Mrs. Gertrude Wilmot, Mullins’s car looked like any of the others. Mullins himself, getting out, might have been, in the gentle light which came from widely distributed street lamps, which came, too, from the houses themselves, any husband and father coming home, a little late—“some things came up at the last minute, mother”—from any office in the city.

  Sergeant Mullins stood for a moment beside the small sedan and looked up and down the street. Some of the people had gone to the early show; they had left lights on in entrance halls. Sergeant Mullins counted the number of houses which, were he a burglar, he would be reasonably sure he could enter safely—houses where lights in entrance halls, and not elsewhere, said, “We’ve all gone to the movies. Come and get whatever we have.” Sergeant Mullins walked up the cement path, and up wooden steps, to the porch of Mrs. Gertrude Wilmot’s home. He pressed the doorbell. Inside a bell shrilled.

  A radio, or television, sounded in the house. Perhaps Mrs. Wilmot, living others’ lives, laughing others’ laughter, had not heard the bell. Mullins pressed again, this time, automatically, twice in quick succession. The sound stopped inside; the porch light went on; after a moment the door opened and Mrs. Gertrude Wilmot, plump and comfortable, looked up at Mullins from blue eyes and said, “Oh, you’re one of the policemen, aren’t you?”

  “Yes ma’m,” Mullins said. “There’re one or two points, Mrs. Wilmot.”

  “Come in,” Mrs. Wilmot said. “Do come in, Mr.—?” Mullins told her his name, he went in. The chintz living room was bright; silk-shaded lamps, a pair of them with fringe, were warm centers of light. It was a very pretty room, Sergeant Mullins thought. He would not have supposed, however, that Mrs. Gertrude Wilmot smoked a pipe. Mullins did not permit himself to appear to sniff.

  “I do hope I can help,” Mrs. Wilmot said.

  “The captain wonders—” Mullins said.

  “Please sit down, sergeant,” Mrs. Wilmot said. “I wonder if I couldn’t get you a cup of coffee?”

  “I guess not, ma’m,” Mullins said. “The captain wonders whether you can’t give us a little more complete description of this cab you took last night. This morning, rather. The one you took home?”

  “Oh dear,” Mrs. Wilmot said. “I’m so afraid I can’t, sergeant. I didn’t notice. It was—it was just a taxicab. And the driver didn’t say much. I always mean to look at the picture and make sure that the driver is really the right man, but somehow I never do.”

  “No ma’m,” Mullins said. “Nobody does much. Still—” He paused. “You see,” he said, “they like us to get all the loose ends tied up. You see what I mean, Mrs. Wilmot? What people call shipshape. We haven’t been able to find the driver of the cab you took. We’d like to take a look at his trip record sheet, so we wouldn’t have to bother you any more.”

  “So you’d know I really did take a cab,” she said. “Didn’t just say I did, but really go back and kill my former husband?”

  “Nobody says that,” Mullins told her. “We—well, we just want it made certain you couldn’t of.” Mullins paused. A familiar voice was in his remembering ears. “Couldn’t have,” Mullins said, with care. “But, if you don’t recall, you don’t.”

  She was, she said, terribly sorry.

  “You came out here just for that?” she asked.

  Sometimes, Mullins told her, they had to go a long way for very little. Just to get one fact for the record—or to try to get it.

  “All the way out for nothing,” she said. “I’m so sorry. Can’t I at least give you a cup of coffee? Or even—something a little stronger?”

  It was very nice of her, but no. Mullins then appeared to remember something else.

  “There’s one other point,” he said. “Have you seen your nephew—Mr. Parsons, that is—today?”

  Her face clouded. She shook her head.

  “I did so hope he’d call me up,” she said. “But—nothing. I’m so worried he’s—well, you know—I—”

  “There’re one or two points the captain thinks he might help clear up,” Mullins said. He spoke a little more loudly than was entirely necessary; it was as if he had rather suddenly come to the conclusion that Mrs. Wilmot was deaf. “One’s about a topcoat.” The last was louder than ever. Then Mullins said, “Come now, Mrs. Wilmot. Don’t tell me you smoke a pipe.”

  “No,” Clyde Parsons said. He stood in a doorway which led from the living room to a room behind it. “No. She couldn’t very well get you to believe that, could she? Not Aunt Trudie.” He put a hand on the frame of the doorway. “Not that she wouldn’t try,” he said. “She’d try damn near anything, bless her.”

  “Oh Clyde!” Mrs. Wilmot said. “I’m so sorry, Clyde.”

  “We were foolish to try it,” Parsons said. “Doesn’t look so good, now we didn’t get away with it. Does it, sergeant?”

  “No,” Mullins said. “It wasn’t very bright, Mr. Parsons. If it had been a cigarette, now, it would have been—” He broke off and regarded Mrs. Wilmot. “Even that wouldn’t have been so good,” he said. “What was the idea, Mr. Parsons?”

  “Not that I know anything I haven’t told you,” Parsons said. He came into the room. He was very pale; his hand shook a little as he took his pipe out of his pocket and put it between his teeth. “I just couldn’t see any point in going over it again.”

  “He’s not well,” Mrs. Wilmot said. “He’s in no condition to be—”

  “Now, Trudie,” Clyde Parsons said, and his voice was gentle.

  “Well, you’re not,” she said. “You need a good rest and—”

  “I,” Parsons said, “have got one of the world’s fanciest hangovers. I’ve got the shakes. The sergeant can see what’s the matter with me, Trudie. My head’s in pieces. I need a drink. I’m not taking one.”

  “Oh dear,” Mrs. Wilmot said. “Perhaps under the circumstances you ought—”

  “No,” Parsons said. “I guess I won’t, Trudie. Well, sergeant, what’s this about a topcoat?”

  “You lost yours last night,” Mullins told him. “It might be important where you lost it.”

  “I don’t know,” Parsons said. He sat down, rather slowly, a little carefully. “That is—yes, I seem to have lost it. I don’t know where. This morning when I woke up, it wasn’t around. That’s all I know.” He nodded. “Believe it or not,” he said. “That’s all I know about it. I pulled a blank—a complete blank.”

  “You didn’t have it when you got home about four this morning,” Mullins said. “But—we hear your coat was found, later, in Mr. Wilmot’s apartment.”

  Parsons looked quickly at Gertrude Wilmot. He looked away, again at Mullins.

  “I gotta tell you, I guess,” Mullins said. “You don’t have to answer anything without a lawyer, if you want one.”

  Parsons shook his head.

  “I can’t answer,” he said. “A lawyer wouldn’t help. I don’t know, sergeant. That is—”

  “But,” Gertrude Wilmot said, “I know, Clyde. And I’m going to tell the sergeant. Because there isn’t anything to hide and we—we don’t need a lawyer.”

  It was rather more than Mullins had bargained for. That, if the relationship between Clyde Parsons and his aunt was as close as Frank had indicated, he might well go to her had been obvious. That he would wait there, smoking a pipe to make his presence known, until the police arrived, was possible, but not to be expected. That now Mrs. Wilmot was “going to tell the sergeant” was something the sergeant had not anticipated. But of course, Mullins thought, if the nice little lady was going to tell too much it might help and—they couldn’t hold h
er to it. Not with only Mullins to hear.

  “O.K.,” Mullins said. “But you don’t have to say anything without a lawyer.”

  “I know,” Mrs. Wilmot said. “Well—I didn’t come straight home from the party, sergeant. I—”

  She had, she said, tried to get Clyde into a cab with her, planning to bring him home to Forest Hills. That was true enough. He had wrenched away; that, also, was true. But, Mrs. Wilmot had not given up so readily.

  She had followed him, in the cab. In the cab, she had waited outside barrooms. Once, when he had been in one bar for some time, she had started to go in and look for him, but by then he was coming out. He had been very drunk; apparently he had not even seen her.

  Mullins looked at Parsons, who shook his head slowly.

  “I don’t remember any of this,” he said. “But—it’s the sort of thing Trudie would do.”

  “Anybody would do it,” she said, and went on.

  She had kept the cab. “Of course, I had to make it worth the man’s while.” From the last bar, Parsons had gone toward the apartment house where his uncle lived.

  “Wait a minute,” Mullins said. “Did he have a coat on? A topcoat?”

  “Of course not,” Mrs. Wilmot said. “I thought I told you that. Such a chilly night and I was afraid—well, that he’d just lie down somewhere and—”

  Parsons groaned slightly.

  But Parsons had not lain down somewhere, there to acquire pneumonia. He had gone, not steadily but persistently enough, back to the apartment house. Mrs. Wilmot had trailed him, seen him go in.

  “There was another man there,” Mullins said. “Anyway, he says he was. Your hus—Mr. Wilmot’s butler.”

  “Sylvester,” Mrs. Wilmot said. “Was he? I didn’t see him.”

  That made it even, if Frank had told the truth. And if Mrs. Wilmot was telling it. They might both be; Frank might easily not have noticed a cab, following a little way behind a walking man, when his eyes were on the man.

  When her nephew had gone into the apartment house, Mrs. Wilmot had paid off the cab driver, and gone in after him. She did not say why she did this; it was not necessary for her to say why. By the time she had reached the lobby it was empty. The elevator door was closed and she could hear the sound of the car’s movement in the shaft. At first she thought the elevator had stopped at the fifth floor, since the indicator which should have marked its progress pointed there. But then she noticed that the indicator did not move, although the car, from the sound, still did. She was certain Clyde Parsons was in the elevator, and certain she knew where he was going.

  “I knew he wouldn’t do anything,” Mrs. Wilmot said. “But—Byron had been so mean to him and—”

  “You can never tell what a drunk will do,” Clyde Parsons said from his chair. “There’s no accounting for drunks.”

  “Clyde,” Gertrude Wilmot said. “I do know. Anyway, what you wouldn’t do.”

  Clyde Parsons had been holding his head in both hands. He lowered his hands for a moment and smiled, a little crookedly. He put his hands back. He’d really tied one on, Sergeant Mullins thought, with sympathy.

  Mrs. Wilmot had pressed the button to bring the elevator down. After some time, it came. She got into it and went up to the top floor, climbed the stairs toward the penthouse.

  She met her husband’s nephew coming down the stairs.

  “Won’t let me in,” Clyde said. “Want to get my coat and the old—” Mrs. Wilmot paused in her quotation, and evidently chose a word. “The old gentleman won’t let me in. Says I didn’t leave any coat. S’drunk, that’s what he is.”

  He might have been, Mullins thought. That fitted. On the other hand, the intoxicated notoriously see drunkenness around them. On another hand, there might be no truth in any of it.

  “You left with Mr. Parsons,” Mullins said. “When you left the party, I mean. Did he have a topcoat then?”

  “No,” Mrs. Wilmot said, quickly. “He didn’t. I remember thinking he ought to have.”

  “Another thing,” Mullins said, “you went up immediately after Mr. Parsons?”

  “As soon as the elevator took him up and came down again.”

  “Yeah,” Mullins said. “How long would you figure that was, Mrs. Wilmot?”

  She paused, seemed to reckon.

  “A minute or two,” she said.

  Mullins also reckoned. “A minute or two” was obviously an underestimate. But even if one made it five minutes, over all, Parsons could hardly have been more than three minutes on the top floor and above, since part of her waiting time he would have spent in transit. It didn’t look like being long enough—if she was telling the truth.

  And it did explain the presence of the topcoat in the penthouse apartment, assuming Sylvester Frank had actually found it there.

  “You don’t remember any of this, Mr. Parsons?” Mullins said.

  Parsons uncovered his face. He said, “No.” He shut out the light again with protecting hands.

  “O.K.,” Mullins said. “Then what?”

  Then, Mrs. Wilmot said, she and Parsons had gone down again. Outside the apartment house, she had again tried to persuade him to go home with her. But again he had wrenched away and gone off, and this time there was no convenient cab to help her. She had tried to follow him but, although his progress had not been steady, it had been rapid. She had lost him within a block or two. Only then—only some minutes after she had realized he had disappeared in the night, in the tangled streets of the Washington Square area—did she find a cab driver willing to make the long trip to Forest Hills.

  “And I don’t remember anything about the cab, I’m afraid,” she told Mullins.

  It had come full circle; they still needed to find a taxicab which had made a trip. If one had, they would find it in the end.

  Mullins considered. He looked at his watch, found that the time was almost eight-thirty. Parsons and Mrs. Wilmot would have to be talked to further; the captain would want to talk to them; the assistant district attorney of the Homicide Bureau would want to talk to them. But it was late, with no more than they had—with, specifically, no wedge of fact with which to crack the story—to take them in. Material witnesses or not, Mullins decided, they might as well spend the night in the comfortable house.

  “The Loot—I mean the captain—will want to talk to you,” he told them both. “A lot of other people will. I could take you in and have you both booked as material witnesses. If I don’t, will we find you here tomorrow?”

  “Of course,” Mrs. Wilmot said. Mullins waited. “Sure,” Parsons said.

  Mullins did not precisely leave it at that, although he left Mrs. Wilmot and Parsons in the comfortable house, in the chintz living room. Back in the police car, he used the car’s radio telephone. The local precinct would provide a man to cover the Wilmot house for the night, to see that the birds remained nested. “Two men would be better,” Mullins said, “front and rear.” He was told that, if he wanted to be that sure, he had better take his people in.

  “O.K.,” Mullins said. “One man, then.”

  He drove back to Manhattan, stopping at a diner.

  Weigand was not at the office of Homicide West. He expected to be back shortly; Mullins was to wait. Mrs. North had called, asking for the captain, then for Mullins.

  “And,” the detective on duty said, “there’s another thing. This man Frank you took in. He’s out again. Lawyer showed up with a writ.”

  Things like that were to be expected. “O.K.,” Mullins said. “We’ll get him when we want him.”

  “They say Frank seemed sort of surprised,” the detective said.

  X

  Thursday, 8:55 P.M. to 10:18 P.M.

  It is absurd for a captain of detectives, Police Department, City of New York—even an acting captain—to get himself lost in the City of New York—even in the Borough of Brooklyn. It is true that Brooklyn, once the area around Borough Hall is uneasily ventured from, is a labyrinth for Manhattanites, best traversed with a
lifeline trailing out behind. It is true that duty infrequently takes Acting Captain William Weigand across the East River, and that pleasure takes him there hardly more often, and then by the most direct route to Ebbets Field. It is nevertheless ridiculous for a police officer to get lost in his own city.

  Against the realization that he was lost, Bill fought a dogged, rear-guard, action. It was not until he discovered that he had once more, and for the third time, got himself on what was too evidently the wrong side of Prospect Park that he decided to ask a policeman. It was some time before he found one, and he approached with the hope that he would not be recognized. After all, convertible Buicks are not standard equipment in the police department; Bill’s was his own, operated by dispensation—and at considerable saving to the department. Of course, there was the matter of the auxiliary red headlights—

  “Yes sir,” the patrolman said, and saluted. “What can I do for you, inspector?”

  Patrolmen are expected to be observant. This one was, in addition, tactful—a policeman in plain clothes, in a Buick Road-master, might be expected to be an inspector. (Cadillac, chief inspector.)

  Bill identified himself. He supplied the address he sought. It was something of a relief that the patrolman had to look it up in a small book; that, having found the name of the street, he looked at it with mild reproach.

  “Can’t say I blame you, captain,” he said. “Well—first thing, you get back to Flatbush Avenue. Then—”

  Bill listened, and remembered. He gave thanks, U-turned, and followed directions. It was nevertheless almost nine-thirty when he stopped in front of a house—detached certainly, but rubbing shoulders with houses on either side—in a narrow street. The house was unlighted, so far as he could see from the curb. Mr. Dewsnap did not welcome with illumination.