by A. A. Fair
“Then what?”
“Then she got Sharples on the phone and he said something to her which quieted her a lot. She was still unstrung, but she felt better about things generally.”
“When was that?”
“Sometime in the afternoon. Shirley is—she acts like a queen. I suppose Mother bores her at times, and yet Shirley really seems to be fond of her. Mother wants me to be more like Shirley. Mother understands that sort of life—the leisure and social ease. It would drive me nuts.
I thought that over and said, “Now you may be getting pretty close to the thing I want.
“What is it?”
I said, “What I want immediately, right at the moment, is for you to go with me to call on someone.
“Who?”
“Señora Lerida. Do you know her?”
“Lerida?” she repeated after me, frowning thoughtfully. “No, I don’t think I know any Señora Lerida. She lives here in the city?”
“She lives here.”
“And what do we talk with her about when we see her?”
“I don’t know.”
“You mean you ask her questions?”
“Yes.”
“And why do you wish me?”
I said, “I want a witness and I want an interpreter.”
“And you pick on me?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I think, perhaps, you will be interested in what develops.”
“About the murder of Robert Cameron?”
“Yes.”
“Very well, I will go with you,” she said simply. “Only I will not do anything to—well, in case my mother was—did—”
“You know that your mother always carries a knife?”
“Yes.”
“And she can throw it?”
“Yes. She always said a woman should never be without means of protecting herself. Even as a little child she talked to me, tried to teach me.”
“To teach you what?”
“How to throw a knife accurately.”
“Oh, I see! And did you learn?”
“Yes.”
“Do you carry a knife?”
“No.”
“Not ever?”
“No.”
Where’s the crow?” I asked, suddenly changing the subject.
“In his cage in the woodshed, I suppose.”
“He’s missed Cameron?”
“Oh, very much. Do you know what the police did? They nailed a screen over the place where he was accustomed to go in and out so he couldn’t get in any more. He flew over there and tried and tried and then he tried to pull the screen to pieces with his beak. It was pathetic watching him. He came to me when I called him, and I took him back here. He’s heartbroken.”
“You’re attached to him?”
“Very much, yes.”
“And he to you?”
“Yes. Now that he no longer has Mr. Cameron, he clings to me in a way that’s really pathetic.”
“Done any more painting?” I asked.
“Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know. Just interested.”
“I’m always working.”
“Sold anything?”
“A little here and there.”
“Lately?”
“No.”
“Does your mother give you money?”
“Why do you ask that?”
“Because I’m interested. I want to know. It may be more important than you think.”
“No, I have always managed to exist. Mother doesn’t approve of my work, you know. Sometimes the larder has been pretty bare, but I have always managed to get by.”
“From your art?”
“Heavens, no!” she said. “It’s like I told you before. I work at my art for a while and then I have to take a job. Believe me, when I’m working I save every penny I can. I’m a veritable miser. Then I return to my art.”
I said, “Somehow you remind me of that girl in the painting, the one standing with the wind blowing her skirts.”
“Looking out across the ocean?” she said, her eyes wistful.
“Looking out across the ocean. Looking out beyond the canvas, out beyond into the future. I think you must have put a lot of yourself into that painting.
“I put a lot of myself into all my paintings, I guess. Perhaps that’s why they don’t sell.”
I said, “Bunk! They don’t sell because people haven’t sense enough to appreciate sincerity. The art editors who buy that stuff want the stereotyped thing-glamour girls with curves but no glamour, half-naked women who have somehow the attitude of professional artists models still clinging to them when they go on the calendars—the type of illustration which doesn’t mean a damn thing. There are stories in your pictures. I suppose a finished artist could see places where the technique was ragged, but the pictures themselves are full of message. Some day you’ll start selling them. When you do, there’ll be a vogue for Dona Grafton pictures.”
She grabbed my hand, squeezed impulsively. “You’re a tonic,” she said. “My gosh, sometimes I try not to get discouraged, but—Oh, well—forget it. Donald, please don’t say anything about—Mother.”
I said, “Let’s go call on Señora Lerida.”
Chapter Twenty-Four:—AN AMAZING WITNESS
THE ADDRESS WAS IN A NEIGHBORHOOD of dilapidated structures which had fallen into disrepair. Landlords were milking these houses dry of every last dollar of rent before tearing them down. Warehouses and small factories were crowding in on the district—noisome, smelly industrial plants not welcome elsewhere. The naked ground had more potential value than could be secured from residential rentals. The houses hadn’t had anything done to them in years and wouldn’t hear the sound of a hammer until they were torn down.
The house we wanted was an unpainted, unkempt place with a sagging porch and steps slightly cockeyed.
We climbed up the steps to the tottering porch. There was no bell. I knocked on the door.
For a moment nothing happened. I pounded on the door. We waited through an interval of silence while the spell of the neighborhood gripped us with a feeling of utter despondency.
The city dump was somewhere off to windward and smoke from the interminable burning, while diluted by the breeze and the distance, still swept that peculiar offensive odor of scorching rubbish throughout the neighborhood.
Not until I was ready to give up did I realize how much I had counted on this Señora Lerida. I felt gloomy and discouraged as I turned back toward the agency car.
“Try it once more,” Dona pleaded. “Perhaps—perhaps she’s old and deaf. I have a feeling. Try it again—louder.”
I banged on the door, this time even going so far as to kick against the lower panel.
Echoes died away and we stood there on the smelly porch waiting. Dona’s fingers dug into my arm. She was listening, hardly breathing.
Abruptly she said, “I hear something. Someone—someone’s coming.”
By this time I heard it—the measured shuffle of slow, slippered feet, dispiritedly moving along an uncarpeted corridor.
The door opened.
A woman’s husky voice croaked, “Who is it?”
I took my cue from that voice, it was not a voice to reason with, not a voice to ask. It was a voice that would respond only to commands, to the usurpation of power. The owner of that voice had been accustomed to being pushed around.
I put my shoulder against the door and said, “We’re coming in. We want to see you.”
She took it as a matter of course.
I took Dona Grafton by one arm, piloted her through the door. The odor of cheap, stale gin assailed our nostrils.
A weak reddish electric light hung from a flyspecked, twisted green dropcord in the kitchen, at the back of the house. I made toward that, piloting Dona through the cold corridor.
Behind us, in a steady, monotonous, dispirited shuffle, came the sounds of the slippered feet as the unprotesting tenant f
ollowed meekly along behind.
Apparently but one room in the house was furnished and that was a combined kitchen, bedroom, and living-room. The sink had long since lost its enamel and was a mass of reddish, rusty stains. Chairs were in various stages of disrepair. The iron bedstead had once been white. Now it was a dull, dirty gray. The pillow on the bed had a dirty pillowslip on it. The bed had no sheets. The blankets were grimy and on the top of the bed was spread a torn and shabby thick cotton quilt.
The woman behind us came shuffling into the circle of light.
She was a woman of years and the years had not been kind. Deep watery pouches depended under the lackluster eyes. Her white hair was stringy and unkempt. Evidently much of the Indian mixed with a trace of Spanish blood. Her seamed face was dark and heavy.
I indicated a chair. “Sit down,” I said, as though I owned the place.
She took the chair I indicated and looked at me with placid, unhurried curiosity.
Behind her I saw a pail under the sink filled to the brim with a littered assortment of garbage and rubbish. The neck of an empty gin bottle protruded over the rim of the pail. On the sink was another gin bottle half empty.
I said, “You know Felipe Murindo?”
She nodded her head.
“How long have you known him?”
“He is my son.”
“Does he send you money?”
Now for the first time her eyes became cautious. “Why?” she asked. “Who are you?”
I said, “Who else gives you money?”
She was silent.
I said, “I am here to make money for you. It is a shame that you—you of all people—should live in these surroundings.” I swept my hand around the shabby room.
“It is all right,” she said philosophically. “It is good enough.”
“It is not good enough. You should have clothes to wear. You should eat better food. You should have a servant to do the heavy work.”
Her eyes remained utterly lackluster and without expression.
“It is nothing,” she said. “This is all I need.”
I said, “How long since you have been in Colombia?”
“I don’t know. A long time.”
I said, “It is a shame that you don’t have an opportunity to go back and see your friends. You could get some new clothes, get a ticket on an airplane, and go back once or twice a year to see some of your old friends.”
Her eyes lit up at that. “Who are you? How is this to be done?”
I said, “Put yourself in my hands. You want to go to Colombia, don’t you?”
“Do you speak Spanish?” she asked.
I said, “The girl does.”
The woman burst into Spanish, quick staccato Spanish that grew more rapid as she talked. The words bounced off my eardrums in a rapid-fire barrage of sound for all the world like a kid running along beside a picket fence with a stick in his hand.
Dona Grafton said, “She wants very much to go back to the home of her people, to see where she was born, to see some of her own friends. Here she has no friends.”
I said, “Those things can be arranged. I am a business agent who takes charge of such things. If she will put herself in my hands, there will be more money for her.” The woman listened to me and understood what I said, but she looked warily to Dona to interpret before she would reply. Then she asked in Spanish, “What is it he wants?”
I said, “You were at the Double Clover Mine for years.” She nodded.
“You were a cook and a nurse. You nursed the little girl that Cora Hendricks brought there?”
She started to nod, then caught herself. Her eyes were watchful and suspicious now. She turned to Dona Grafton and said, “Translate.”
Dona put what I had said into Spanish.
Señora Lerida was suspicious now. So far she would come but no farther.
I had to go on from there. I said, “The child taken to the United States was not the child that Cora Hendricks brought to the mine. After her death, there was a substitution. The wife of the mine superintendent switched these children. Her own daughter was sent to the United States to inherit great money. The child that Cora Hendricks had brought back to the mine with her became the daughter of Juanita Grafton. You know these things. This information can be of great value.”
The woman didn’t say anything. She watched me with eyes that had suddenly grown avaricious. Then somewhat tardily she turned to Dona Grafton for an interpretation.
Dona Grafton was watching me with an expression of utter incredulity on her face.
I said, “Never mind the emotional reaction. Forget the personal implications. And for the love of Mike get busy and interpret.”
The girl spoke with Señora Lerida in Spanish. The old woman answered her with a monosyllable. Dona Grafton used more Spanish, gesticulating with her hands. Words hit the top of her mouth, bounced into a machine-gun-like sequence of sounds. Again the old woman replied with a short sentence. Once more Dona Grafton made words and this time Señora Lerida began talking. As she talked she increased the tempo of her speech. More and more rapidly she poured out words. Her face became animated as she threw herself into what she was saying.
When she had finished, Dona turned to me. Her eyes were dazed and hurt. Her trembling lips were fighting back emotion but her voice was steady enough. She said, “It is true. This woman did not know that because of the substitution the daughter of—of—Juanita Grafton received much money. She thought it was merely an attempt to cover up an illicit affair. She will place herself in your hands.”
“Now then,” I said, “this is important. Find out if Robert Cameron came to call on her.”
Señora Lerida didn’t wait for the question to be interpreted. “The Señor who was killed?” she asked.
“Yes, that one.”
“He was nice. He gave me money.”
“When?”
“The day before he died. One day he gave me money. The next he died.”
“You talked with him?”
“But little.”
“Some?”
“Yes, a little.”
“Did you tell anyone he had talked with you?”
“No one.”
“Not anyone at all?”
“I swear it.”
I said to Dona, “Tell her she will have to talk fully and frankly to people who will take down what she says, that her exact words in Spanish will be written, that she will sign the statement, and then she will have money and she may return to Colombia to visit her friends. She must put herself in my hands, I will be her manager.”
There was still no necessity to translate. Señora Lerida said, with the philosophic resignation of a race long accustomed to take things as they come, “I have agreed. Do we drink?”
“Not now,” I said. “We don’t drink.”
I turned to Dona Grafton. “Ring up police headquarters. Get Captain Frank Sellers on the line and tell him to get a Spanish-speaking stenographer, a notary public, and get out here at once.”
“We could take her to him,” Dona said.
“I want him to see her here. I want him to hear the story right here in this room. It will make more impression that way and I don’t intend to let her out of my sight.”
“Couldn’t we go to him and explain—”
I said, “I turned my back on one witness and a ton of dynamite went off. I’m sorry, but you’ve got to take the agency car and get to a telephone. I’m staying right here with this woman. Nothing is going to happen to her until we get a sworn statement. I suppose,” I added, perhaps a little sarcastically, “you realize what this means?”
She said, “Donald, I have been trying not to think of what it is going to mean.” With that, she walked out, leaving me there with the old woman in the filthy, gin-reeking, uncarpeted room.
Chapter Twenty-Five:—ALL ABOARD THE GRAVY TRAIN
SENORA LERIDA SIGNED THE STATEMENT with a trembling hand. Captain Sellers blotted the signature, folde
d the paper, pushed it into the inside pocket of his coat, and looked at me significantly.
I followed him down the echoing corridor to the rickety front porch.
“Well?” Sellers asked.
“Can’t you take her into custody as a material witness?” I asked.
“Of what?”
“Of circumstances leading to the murder of Robert Cameron.”
He said, “You wouldn’t be trying to cut yourself a piece of cake, would you, Donald?”
“How come?”
“The only thing she’s a material witness to is the switching of babies back there in that little mining-town in Colombia and you’re going to have a hell of a time proving that, my lad. It’s one thing for a woman to make a statement on a piece of paper, another for a witness to stand up under cross-examination and get her story over so a judge will convict a businessman of fraud, swap the beneficiary of a trust, and put a couple of hundred thousand bucks into circulation. Hell’s bells, if it was that easy, every heiress in the country would be faced with blackmail. Little cuties would be cropping up all over the country, claiming they were switched—”
“You don’t get it.”
“I guess I don’t,” he said dryly.
I said, “Forget that substitution business. Concentrate on the murder of Cameron.”
“So what?”
I said, “Cameron and Sharples were trustees. Ostensibly there was nothing in it for them whether Shirley Bruce was Dona Grafton, or whether Dona Grafton was the real Shirley Bruce. But when they cut in on the emerald deal, that was something else again. There was gravy there, and Cameron, Sharples, and Shirley Bruce hopped aboard the gravy train.”
“All right, all right,” Sellers said. “Let’s concede they hopped aboard the gravy train. What’s that got to do with Cameron getting bumped?”
“Absolutely nothing.”
He looked at me in surprise.
I said, “My best guess is that Sharples found out Felipe Murindo’s story years ago. And Sharples was the one who kept Murindo on the job at the mine as manager. Let’s assume that Cameron was in on the emerald deal, but that was all. He didn’t know anything about the baby switching. Sharples kept that for his private use.”