by Amanda Cross
“Jerry, you’re wonderful.”
“I think perhaps after law school I will join the F.B.I. Do they look for murderers, or only Communists and drug dispensers? I’m rather enjoying this.”
“We shall have to map out a plan,” Kate said, with a certain amount of primness, to control his exuberant spirits.
“That’s simple. Tomorrow morning you return to Thomas Carlyle—if that is the man with whom you were carrying on an affair in the stacks—and I will follow the trail of the ten o’clock patient in the advertising business. You see before you a young man burning with the desire to go into the advertising business. Will you have a thinking man’s cigarette?”
Eight
JERRY arrived at Kate’s apartment the next morning at a quarter to nine. They had decided that he would thus arrive each morning for a conference. Kate assumed, though she did not actually ask him, that his mother, friends, and fiancée still imagined him to be driving the truck.
“One thing’s been worrying me,” Kate said. “Why didn’t the man, whoever he was, return the uniform? If he returned it before twelve the porter would never have known it was gone. Why didn’t the porter tell the police it had been stolen, by the way?”
“To answer the second question first, the porter didn’t tell the police because he doesn’t like the police, and they might have ‘pulled him in’ or thought he was implicated. The theft of the uniform might well make it look like an inside job.”
“How easily you slip into the jargon.”
“To answer the first question,” said Jerry, ignoring this, “he didn’t return the uniform because it was risky enough stealing it. Why risk returning it, and double the chance of getting caught? Also, I imagine, it made it much easier for him to get out of the place unnoticed. A man in a porter’s uniform isn’t really looked at, but a man in a business suit emerging from a women’s dormitory might very well be noticed. Easier to use the uniform for a quick getaway, and then drop it down an incinerator someplace.”
“What did he do with his own clothes when he put on the uniform?”
“Really, Kate, you don’t seem to have much of a flair for this sort of thing, if you don’t mind my mentioning it. He put it on over his own clothes, naturally; the porter is, unfortunately, on the large side, so it’s no good looking for a tiny murderer. Those uniforms are, of course, handed around, and are not expected to be more than approximate fits.”
“Well,” Kate said, “I have, for the moment, decided to abandon Thomas Carlyle. Delightful enough man, in his way, but not exactly restful, and dreadfully time-consuming. I had better take on Frederick Sparks. He is, after all, in my field—I know several people in his English Department, and if there is a motive there, I am likelier than you to smell it out. That leaves you with the advertising business. Perhaps, by tonight, we shall, one or the other, have a suspect bulging with motive. We may, of course, find that our investigations take several days. Perhaps we should keep notes, and when we are finished we can write a manual of do-it-yourself detection. Are you actually going to apply for a job?”
“I haven’t really decided yet. You know, I think I’ll try to work in Dr. Michael Barrister’s nurse. I got a glimpse of her yesterday—very young, very attractive, and, I would guess, very eager to talk, if encouraged immediately after work when she has just spent hours listening to the ailments of aging women. We might as well find out all we can about the sinister doctor across the hall.”
“You haven’t met him yet. When you do, you will discover that he is, unfortunately, not sinister at all. However, we must search out every avenue of possibility, if that is the correct phrase. Don’t, by the way, get so involved with the young, attractive nurse that you forget my investigation and your fiancée.”
“I only came to work on the case because all detectives have such a fascinating sex life. Have you read Raymond Chandler?”
“I have read Raymond Chandler, and his detective was not engaged to be married.”
“Nor did he have a nice safe job driving around the countryside with frozen food. Nor, now I think of it, did he spend six months in the Army as a cook.”
“A cook! Why on earth?”
“Because I’ve never cooked a thing in my life, and had a great deal of experience driving trucks. But they didn’t have any room in the transport section because it was all full up with cooks. Do not, in any case, worry about my morals, which, to the extent they are not already corrupted, are incorruptible. I knew a guy who got involved with a redhead after he was engaged to a fetching brunette. He met the redhead in a village nightclub where he had a temporary job playing the bass fiddle. The two women, between them, wore him down to such a state that he joined a ship’s orchestra, even though he once got seasick on the boat ride to the Statue of Liberty, and was last heard of in ragged clothes, playing the violin under a balcony in Rome, waiting for Tennessee Williams to work him into his latest play.”
He departed, having acquired from Kate a copy of the picture found in Janet Harrison’s purse, money, and a key to Kate’s apartment, should he require to return to home base when she was gone.
About Frederick Sparks, whose appointment came after Janet Harrison’s, and who had been present at the finding of the body, Kate was prepared to indulge the profoundest suspicions. For a few minutes after Jerry’s departure she considered calling Emanuel to beg a few minutes in which to discuss Mr. Sparks. It might be Emanuel whose whole professional career—indeed, whose life was in danger—but in Kate’s eyes his professional stature had not diminished by one millimeter, and she found this extraordinarily encouraging, even though it meant she begged for, rather than demanded, time. Kate felt certain that Emanuel’s patients would think of him in the same way. She would wait till she had met Frederick Sparks, or at least had garnered some impressions of him, before attempting to extricate something from Emanuel.
She was interrupted in these ruminations by a telephone call from Reed, who sounded exactly as Jerry had the night before.
“We have finally discovered something,” Reed said, “that, I have a hunch, will break the case, one way or another.”
“I know all about the uniform,” Kate said primly.
“What uniform?”
“Sorry, I must have been thinking of one of my other cases. What have you found?”
“Janet Harrison left a will.”
“Did she indeed? I hope she was murdered for her money; what we badly need in this case is a motive.”
“She had $25,000 invested in some family business which paid her 6 percent (preferred stock) or, to save you the embarrassment of higher mathematics, $1,500 dollars a year.”
“Perhaps the family in the business murdered her for her stock.”
“Scarcely. I’m trying to tell you that she left a will. She didn’t leave the stock to the family. Who do you think she left it to? Forgive me, whom?”
“If she left it to Emanuel, I shall shoot myself.”
“Messy. And people unacquainted with guns usually miss, shatter the walls and frighten the neighbors. She left it to a Daniel Messenger, M.D.”
“Who’s he? Reed! Could he be the youngish man in the picture?”
“Two minds with but a single thought. Or rather, twenty minds. We have already acquired a description of Dr. Daniel Messenger, who practices medical research—does one practice research? I’m sure not—in Chicago. It’s obvious he’s older than our man, and couldn’t be more unlike the picture if he’d planned it that way, the unspeakable blackguard.”
“Perhaps he’s disguised—dyed his hair or had plastic surgery.”
“Kate, my girl, I get more worried about you every time we have a conversation. We are about to receive a picture of the chap, and I think it will convince even you. I gather no one could mistake him for a young Cary Grant; a young Lon Chaney, in full makeup, would apparently be nearer the mark. His hair grows low on his forehead, he has a long, rather fleshy nose, and his ears stick out. Undoubtedly he has a beautiful
personality; he certainly must have character, to go into research, with the money lying around for doctors these days.”
“What was he to Janet Harrison, and where did you find the will?”
“What he was to Janet Harrison is the question of the hour. He was interrogated by a Chicago detective who swears that the good doctor had never heard the name, and certainly didn’t recognize her picture. There is something about that girl which is beginning to fascinate me. How we got the will is a demonstration of the benefits of publicity. The lawyer with whom she had left it called us, and turned over the will. No, you need not ask: the lawyer did not know her. She apparently picked his name out of the phone book. He wrote out the will, a perfectly simple one, and charged her fifty dollars. He had been away on some beastly business trip, and the name registered only when his wife talked on about the case after he got home. He seems perfectly genuine. But there must be a connection with this Daniel Messenger, though as far as we can figure out he and Janet Harrison have never even been in the same place at the same time.”
“Deposit ten cents for the next five minutes, please.”
“Reed, you’re in a phone booth.”
“With practice, my dear, you will make a great detective. I could hardly spill out all these secrets from a phone in the D.A.’s office. Kate, I’m beginning to get interested in your case. This probably proves that insanity is catching. I haven’t got a dime.” He hung up.
Daniel Messenger. For a few hectic moments Kate toyed with the idea of hopping a plane for Chicago. But, however brutal one might be with Thomas Carlyle, George Eliot had to be coped with tomorrow. And of course, one did not “hop” a plane. One took a long slow ride to an airport, and argued for hours with ticket agents who seemed to have been hired five minutes ago for what they supposed to be another job; and if one survived that, one got to Chicago only to join a “stack” over the airfield there, and then either died of boredom or crashed into a plane that thought it was in the stack over Newark. With an effort, Kate brought her wandering mind back to Frederick Sparks. Reed’s call, however, apart from distracting her and thickening the plot, had reminded her of the uses of the telephone. She dialed the number of a professor of sixteenth-century literature with whom she had studied for the orals, lo, these many years ago.
“Lillian. This is Kate Fansler.”
“Kate! How’s everything in the university on the hill?”
“Hideous, as always in the spring.” April is the cruelest month. That was how it had begun. For a few moments they chatted about personal things. “I’m calling,” Kate continued, “to ask about a colleague of yours. Frederick Sparks.”
“If you’re thinking of hiring him, don’t. In the first place he’s got tenure and wouldn’t dream of leaving, and in the second place he’s a great admirer of closet drama, and thinks The Cenci is better than Macbeth.”
“Nothing was further from my mind than hiring him. I’ll tell you another time what this is all about. What’s he like?”
“Rather tedious. Good scholar. Lives alone, having recently broken away from mother, at least to that extent. Has a French poodle named Gustave.”
“Gustave?”
“After Flaubert. Although his favorite French author is Proust. Gustave’s, that is.”
“I take it he does not care for women. Sparks, that is.”
“Most people take it. Me, I’ve given up labels. So many incorrect ones have been attached to me that I’ve abandoned them entirely. Besides, he’s being analyzed.”
This was a lead which Kate had no wish at the moment to follow. “Lillian, is there some way I could meet Sparks, socially perhaps, or at least casually? Soon, that is.”
“You fascinate me. No one’s been anxious to meet Sparks since the P. and B. committee considered him for tenure.”
“What on earth is the P. and B. committee?”
“Oh, you innocents who do not work for city colleges. No one has the faintest idea what the initials stand for, but it’s all-powerful. As a matter of fact, I am going to a party tonight for a colleague who just got a Fulbright to India, and Sparks will undoubtedly be there. I’ve got a date, but I will drag you along as a cousin of his we couldn’t dump. The date’s that is. Will that do?”
“That will do gloriously. But the fewer lies, the better, I always think. Let’s just say I dropped in on you.”
“Very well, you mysterious creature. Drop in on me about eight. Bring a bottle for the festivities, and you will be triply welcomed. See you then.”
Which left Kate with nothing to do but get back to work and wonder what Jerry was up to. Richard Horan, of the advertising business, must by now be settled down on Emanuel’s couch. Dr. Barrister’s pretty nurse must be involved with the women patients. Jerry, for all his detective pose, was probably taking in a double feature. Kate put Daniel Messenger firmly from her mind, and turned to Daniel Deronda.
Nine
JERRY was not at a double feature. It would have annoyed him to know that Kate thought he might be; but his annoyance would have been nothing to Kate’s had she known what he was up to. He was, in fact, lying in wait for Emanuel.
It was not precisely that Jerry doubted Kate’s assurances of Emanuel’s innocence. The two of them, Jerry knew, had been friends, and, Jerry suspected, something more—though Kate had been rather vague on this point—and this said a good deal for Emanuel’s innocence, since women, Jerry believed, did not automatically have a high opinion of men they had loved but not married. Nonetheless, to Jerry’s masculine, therefore objective, intelligence, Emanuel was still Number One as a suspect, and the fact that Kate was convinced of his innocence did not weigh as much with Jerry as he had pretended. Although he was prepared to follow Kate’s instructions—she was, after all, paying him—he could carry them out with a greater sense of single purpose if he had met, and talked with, Emanuel. Jerry had, at almost twenty-two, great faith in his ability to size people up.
It was not possible, of course, simply to go in and present himself to Emanuel as Kate’s assistant and nephew-to-be. In the first place, Kate had not told Emanuel about his, Jerry’s, part in the investigations; and in the second place, it was important to catch Emanuel off his guard. For one thing, he wanted to know if Emanuel, with the eleven o’clock hour now free, would simply wander out, as Kate and Nicola had been sure he would.
Jerry therefore provided himself with a chamois from a Madison Avenue store—he righteously did not enter this on his expense account—and stood across the street from the entrance to Emanuel’s office polishing a car. This gave him a fine view of anyone who went out or in, and also a reason for loitering on an elegant street where people were not encouraged to loiter. It would be inconvenient if the owner of the car appeared, but Jerry was prepared to cope with this.
At five to eleven a young man emerged from the building. Richard Horan, in all probability. Jerry, ducking behind the car to wipe the fender, got a long look at him. Mr. Horan would have to be encountered later in the day. Rather to Jerry’s surprise, Mr. Horan looked like Hollywood’s idea of a “young Madison Avenue executive on his way up”; because Horan was in analysis, Jerry realized that he had expected him to look a bit more harried and uncertain, the Brooks Brothers suit perhaps askew. But here was assurance personified. Jerry felt a surge of relief, the origin of which he did not question; in fact, he was, without knowing it, glad that he did not have to pity Mr. Horan.
Once the object of his scrutiny had disappeared, appropriately enough, in the direction of Madison Avenue, Jerry continued to polish the car, though less assiduously, pausing to smoke a cigarette. He saw one woman enter, and one woman leave, presumably on their way to and from Dr. Barrister’s office. To his surprise, neither of the women could be described as “aged.” One of them, in fact, was considerably younger than Kate, whom Jerry thought of, though he would have died rather than admit it to her, as middle-aged. (Kate, of course, had had far too much experience with students of Jerry’s age not to know p
recisely how he thought of her.) He forced himself to wipe the entire side of the car carefully, and to smoke a cigarette in an exaggeratedly leisurely fashion, before facing the fact of what was to be done next. He had just about decided that he had better go in and spin some sort of tale to Emanuel, when Emanuel himself, smoking a cigarette, came out of the doorway and turned toward the park.
Jerry could not, of course, be certain that this was Emanuel, but the man was the right age and was, moreover, wearing extremely shabby clothes, such as were unlikely to be worn by any tenant of so excellent a building except this eccentric man who donned old clothes for the purpose of running around the reservoir. Jerry folded his chamois neatly and left it on the fender as part payment to the owner of the car for the use that had been made of it, and followed the man into the park.
It was by no means clear to Jerry what he intended to do next. Trot around the reservoir after the man, trip him up perhaps, and then slip, amid apologies, into a conversation? Emanuel was certainly no fool; could Jerry get away with that? Perhaps, at the reservoir, something would present itself. One thing was clear: this man walked with urgency, with the physical energy of one who has sat too long, who needs, quite simply, to move. This explained why he would go to the trouble of changing his clothes for scarcely half an hour’s run.
But he was destined not to have the run. He slowed down on one of the paths, so that Jerry came dangerously close to him. What had stopped him was a woman—who could tell what age?—over-made-up, appearing, appallingly, on the edge of lunacy. She was weeping, and the mascara ran in black streaks down her aging face, mingling with the rouge. Others saw her, some smirked, most simply turned away and skirted the path to avoid her. Jerry’s instinct was to do the same.