Rachel was silent for a time. The taxi went west through Twelfth Street and down Seventh Avenue and into Fourth Street.
“It’s dreadful,” Rachel said. “Since I’ve known you there’ve been so many dreadful things.” She stopped and looked at the back of the taxi driver’s head. “I don’t mean that the way it sounds. Fine things, too. Lovely things. Only—only the once or twice I met her she seemed so alive. And so young.” She stopped again. The taxi turned up Sixth and into Waverly Place, headed west. He stopped at Gay Street He said, “This all right, mister? It’s one-way.”
Tony said it was all right and paid and tipped—more than he should have done because taxi drivers don’t, for the most part, like short hauls. They walked the half block and around the crook in Gay Street, and he waited while she unlocked the door and opened it. He put both hands on her shoulders and pulled her toward him and kissed her and let her go. He said, “Lock yourself in tight. Put the chain on the door,” and she said, “Yes, Tony,” and then, “Good night, darling.” But her voice was dimmed.
He went back to Waverly Place and went left, right and left across Sixth Avenue to a three-story brick house on Washington Place with a cruise car parked in front of it and a uniformed man standing at the top of the sandstone steps. The double inner doors of the entry hall stood open because something had been carried out that way. Tony climbed two flights of carpeted stairs. A door on the third floor was open and he went into a long living room with tall windows at the end of it. One of the two detectives in the room was Charles Pieronelli, who was supposed to be off duty. But Tony himself was supposed to be off duty.
“So,” Pieronelli said, “you guys think there’s a tie-in.”
“Somebody did,” Tony said. “She worked for Prentis. Oh, sang in the choir.”
“Yeah,” Pieronelli said. “We come up with that. Name of Janet Rushton. Pretty little thing, they say. They’ve taken it away. Matter of fact, they’re about finished in there.”
He gestured toward a narrow hallway which ran from the living room toward the street side of the apartment.
“Bedroom,” Pieronelli said. “Used a pillow, way it looks.”
Tony said, “Smothered?” and Pieronelli said “Yeah.”
“They’re not pretty any more when they’ve been smothered,” Tony said.
“No,” Pieronelli said. “Pictures. Publicity shots from her agent, way it looks. She was pretty in the pictures. She—”
A man with a camera came through the narrow hallway, and two men, one of them carrying a flat case, came after him. The police photographer said, “All yours, Charlie,” and Charlie Pieronelli said “O.K.,” and the three went out of the apartment and clumped down the stairs, their feet heavy on the carpet. Pieronelli opened a door on the left, and they went into the bedroom of the apartment. It was almost as large as the living room and, like the living room, had a fireplace. This fireplace, however, had been walled up.
The bed in the room was a very wide one. Bedclothes had been stripped back on it and there was no pillow. “Took the pillow along, the lab boys did,” Pieronelli said. “Lipstick on it. Smeared around.”
Tony Cook looked at the bed on which a pretty young woman had been pinned down and smothered with a pillow. It didn’t tell him anything.
“She’d been dead maybe eighteen hours, according to the M.E.’s man,” Pieronelli said. “Rigor. She had all her clothes on. Funny thing, according to the guy who found her, her dress had been pulled down to cover her legs. All very neat. Very decent.”
“The guy who found her?”
“Name of Minor,” Pieronelli said. “Arthur Minor. Says he had a date with her. Going to take her to dinner. We asked him to stay around. He’s in the little room we came past. Four rooms in the place. Two big ones and two little ones. One of the little rooms’s the kitchen. Off the living room. The other’s a sort of guest room, apparently. That’s where we’re holding—that’s where we asked this Minor guy to wait. Want to get his story, Tony?”
“May as well, I guess,” Tony said. “The lieutenant’s on his way over, but he lives in Brooklyn. Take him a while. I was handy, sort of. Not in here, I think. Back in the living room.”
He and Pieronelli went back down the hallway, past a door. “Bathroom,” Pieronelli said. “All done in green tile. Quite a place Miss Rushton had here. Must have set her back.”
The living room was also quite a place, looked at a second time. The fireplace, with logs piled in it, was of white marble; the long windows had green curtains to the floor. The room was carpeted in a darker green; there were two sofas, both covered in warm yellow, and a deep chair, in the color of the curtains, with a low table beside it. The table had a mirror top. She’d gone to a good deal of trouble to make the room attractive, Tony thought. She had also had to spend a good deal on the room.
She had planned to keep it safe. There was a heavy lock that looked new on the door leading to the outer hall. There was also a guard chain. It was not engaged.
“Snap lock,” Pieronelli said. “The super had a key. Not the super, I guess. Seems he owns the building. She didn’t have the chain on. Probably let in whoever it was that—”
He stopped because a tall young man had come down the hallway into the room. He had thick brown hair which he had let grow a little long. There was a wave in the brown hair. He had a thin face and, Tony thought, a rather full mouth. The pretty-boy type, Tony thought him, and thought that he was probably in his mid-twenties. And that, from the redness of his eyes, he had been crying.
“Mr. Minor,” Pieronelli said. “Mr. Arthur Minor. This is Detective Cook, Mr. Minor. From the homicide squad.”
“I’ve told you all I know about it,” Minor said. He had a deep voice; to Tony an unexpectedly deep voice. It wasn’t at all what he thought of as a pretty-boy voice.
“We have to go over things a lot,” Tony said. “Be sure we get them straight. Way I get it, you came to take Miss Rushton to dinner. Had a date with her?”
“Of course. We—we—were—”
He shook his head and then put both hands up to his forehead, so that the heels of his hands covered his eyes.
“All right,” Tony said. “Just take it easy, Mr. Minor. Sit down, why don’t you? And just tell us what happened.”
Minor sat down. He took his hands down from his head. He said, “Sorry. It’s been a hell of a shock. I was fond of Jan.”
Tony said, “Sure. Damn bad thing. Just tell us what happened.”
What had happened, Arthur Minor told them, was that he had come around at six-thirty to take Janet Rushton out to dinner. Six-thirty had been the time agreed on. Oh, if it mattered, they’d had the date for about ten days. He had pushed the doorbell and waited and nothing had happened. He had tried again, and she had not spoken to him through the intercom and had not pressed the button upstairs which would have released the lock on the inner door. After waiting for a minute or so, he had again pushed on the bell button and again nothing had come of it.
“She was always on the dot,” Minor said. “Not like a lot of them. Ever since I’ve known her she was ready on the dot.”
How long had he known her?
“About a year. Dated her a few times. Took her to dinner where we could dance. And—oh, to movies and a couple of times to shows. That sort of thing.”
That was all? Not that it mattered too much, but that was all?
“Yes,” Minor said. “We were just friends, if that’s what you’re getting at. We weren’t sleeping together. Now and then I’d get the idea of taking her somewhere and calling her up and if she didn’t have another date she’d mostly say all right. Last month or so she seemed to have a lot of dates. So I’d call up another girl.”
“You said you were fond of her,” Tony said.
“Yeah. Only just that. I wasn’t tied up with her. Not the way I guess you mean.”
“O.K.,” Tony said. “You rang her doorbell and she didn’t answer it. Then?”
“I waited
around maybe five minutes and tried again,” Minor said. “Not much point to it, but we did have a date. And she kept dates. So I thought, maybe she’s had to go some place—drugstore or some place like that. Or maybe the liquor store. So I went out and walked around a couple of blocks and came back and tried again. On account of she’d never stood me up before, if you know what I mean?”
Tony knew what he meant.
When Minor had returned, which was perhaps in ten minutes or so—it was getting on for seven—he had pressed the bell again, and again nothing had happened.
He had looked in her mailbox, then. Its cover had a grating and he could see into it, and there was mail in it. From the looks, quite a lot of mail. He could see the corner of one of the envelopes, and it had her agent’s return address on it.
“The guy who handled her,” Minor said. “She’s—” He paused and his thin face grew longer. “She was a singer,” he said, and there was a shake in his deep voice. “Cafés, mostly. Places like that. She was in a musical last winter. Had a good number. But it folded. She’d had a job singing in some sort of choir the last few weeks. Just to fill in.”
“Yes,” Tony said. “An evangelist’s choir. The Reverend Mr. Prentis’s choir.”
Minor merely shook his head. The name seemed to mean nothing to him. Apprarently he didn’t read newspapers or look at TV news.
“You looked in her mailbox,” Tony said. “Saw there was mail still in it. So?”
“Way it is,” Minor said. “You go down and look in the mailbox the first thing. First thing in the morning. See if your agent’s come through with anything. Do it myself.”
“You’re in the theater too, Mr. Minor?”
“Hell, no. I write stories. Pieces, if you know what I mean. Had one in Esquire last month. Got some out with my agent now. So first thing in the morning, you look in the mailbox. And if she hadn’t this morning, she must be out of town or something. Only we had a date and if she’d got an out-of-town job she’d have given me a ring. So—so I got to thinking maybe something had happened.”
Tony Cook nodded his head.
“I knew—anyway, I’d met—the man who owns this building. Lives in the basement apartment, only they call it the garden apartment, and the floor above. He and his wife and a couple of kids. Anyway, I’ve seen kids in the garden from—from this room. Name of Brady. Something like that. He’s a lawyer or something. So, when I started to get worried about Jan, I rang his bell.”
Brady had, after a minute or two, come along the first-floor hall and looked out into the entryway. He had recognized Minor. “He’s got a memory for faces, I guess,” Minor said. “Only met him once. Jan and I were going out and he came up through the basement gate and Jan introduced us.”
Brady had let Minor in and had listened to him—listened and looked doubtful. Perhaps Miss Rushton had merely confused her dates. People did sometimes. He didn’t want to disturb a tenant. Especially a good tenant like Miss Rushton. Quiet girl. Didn’t throw any wild parties or that sort of thing. Reliable sort of young woman.
“I told him that that was just the point,” Minor told Tony Cook and Charles Pieronelli. “Told him she wasn’t the kind of girl who’d get confused about her dates. So maybe something had happened to her. Maybe she’d got sick or something. Finally he said, all right, we could go up and knock on her door.”
They had climbed the stairs and knocked on the door and she had not come to the door. Minor had called through the door. Finally he had turned to Brady and said, “You’ve got a key to her apartment, haven’t you?”
“Sure,” Brady said. “It’s my house. Only, it’s her apartment. I’ve got no right to—”
But, finally he had gone back downstairs for his passkey. He had put the key in the lock and said, “Won’t do any good if she’s got the chain up, you know,” and turned the key.
The chain had not been up. Brady had opened the door a few inches and called, “Miss Rushton?” and, when there was no answer, called again, more loudly. Then he had said, “Guess she’s not here,” and started to close the door again.
“I said we might as well be sure, now we’d gone that far,” Minor said. “And he said, ‘It’s trespass, you know,’ but didn’t try to stop me. And—well, her bedroom door wasn’t closed and I looked in and—and there she was. I called her again and then yelled to Brady and—well, he came on in, finally.”
He stopped for a moment and, again, ground the heels of his hands against his forehead. Without taking them down, he said, “She looked as if she’d just—just lain down with her clothes on and—and gone to sleep. Only, the pillow was over her face and—sort of pressed down. You could still see where somebody had pressed on it. And I went over and touched her and—she was cold.” He paused. “Dead cold,” he said. “I tried to lift her up and—well, I knew then.”
“Rigor had begun to pass off when the ambulance man got here,” Pieronelli said. “It was warm in the room. Makes a difference sometimes.”
“Yes, Charlie,” Tony Cook said. “I’ve read the books. When you first saw her, Mr. Minor. You thought she was just asleep? Had lain down to rest with her clothes on and fallen asleep?”
“That’s the way it looked. At first.”
“Not as if she’d struggled? I mean, tossed about?”
“Just stretched out. On her back. Her—her dress all smoothed out. As if—oh, as if she’d been careful not to rumple it or anything. She was wearing a—I don’t know what you’d call it. A dress-up dress or something. Silk or something like it. A pale green dress. She—she liked things green.”
“As if she were dressed to go out?”
“Yes. But—but not for our date. I knew that when I tried to lift her up.”
“Like I said,” Pieronelli said, “she’d been dead maybe eighteen hours, according to the doc.”
“Yes,” Cook said. “Mr. Minor, you said that for the last month or so Miss Rushton had been tied up pretty much of the time. When you tried to make dates with her.”
“Yeah.”
“Made you think that, perhaps, she’d—oh, hit it off with someone else? Was seeing someone often?”
Minor shrugged his shoulders. He said, “Look, I told you the way it was. Now and then I’d call her up and ask her to go to dinner or something. Sometimes she’d be free and sometimes she wouldn’t. So I supposed she had dates with other guys, and that was O.K. too. Girls like her—well, a lot of guys want to take them out. I—I didn’t have any option on her.”
“But would have liked to have had, maybe?”
“I told you I was fond of her. All right, maybe I’d been getting fonder of her the more I knew her. She—she was a hell of a sweet kid.”
“Upset this last month or so, when she was tied up so much?”
“Not to say upset. Disappointed, you could call it. Not pining away, if that’s what you’re getting at. And, not jealous, mister. And last night, before you ask me, I was at a party over on Twelfth Street. A biggish sort of party with a lot of people I know. From around eight-thirty until God knows when. Three in the morning, maybe.”
He gave the address of the party and the name of his hosts.
“I hadn’t been planning to ask you,” Cook said. “But since you’ve brought it up, Mr. Minor. At the party until about three this morning. Then?”
“I took a girl home,” Minor said. “She lives uptown on the east side. Girl I’ve known for years. And—all right, I stayed around a while. Then I went home and went to bed. All right?”
“Perfectly all right,” Cook said and raised his eyebrows at Pieronelli.
“Yes,” Pieronelli said. “We know where Mr. Minor lives. A few blocks from here.”
“You’ve had a bad experience, Mr. Minor,” Tony Cook said. “Probably like to go get yourself a drink. Dinner maybe.”
“Jesus Christ,” Minor said, “you think I’m hungry?”
“No,” Tony Cook said. “I don’t suppose you are. Go do what you want to do. If we need to, we’ll g
et in touch with you.”
Minor went back along the hallway and returned with a topcoat over his arm. He went out through the living-room door.
“Only door to the apartment?” Cook asked Pieronelli, and Pieronelli shook his head. He said, “Kitchen door. Locked and chained.”
“You’ve talked to this man Brady? The one who owns the house?”
“Clifford Brady,” Pieronelli said. “Yeah, Tony. Tells it the same way. Says Minor acted just like you’d expect a man to act who’d found a girl friend stretched out dead. He—”
The door from the outer hall opened, and Lieutenant Nathan Shapiro came into the room. He looked tired.
8
There were half a dozen glossy photographic prints in a desk in Janet Rushton’s bedroom. Pieronelli brought them out to the living room and gave them to Shapiro. They were all of a blonde young woman with the brightness and the contours of youth in her face—a pretty girl, but like many pretty girls. Underlines were pasted to the bottoms of the prints—“Janet Rushton, Soprano”—and a list of places where she had sung. Most of the places were in New York. One of them was in Las Vegas. Some of the photographs were in soft focus, and in those Janet looked a little wistful. On the backs of the photographs had been stamped “Talent, Inc.,” with an address in the Forties.
Shapiro selected two from the half dozen—two in which the focus was the hardest. He gave one to Pieronelli and said, “Want to get us some copies made?” and Pieronelli said, “Sure, Lieutenant. He went back into the bedroom and returned with two envelopes the prints would fit in and said, “What you want, Lieutenant? And we’ve got her address book.”
Shapiro nodded his head sadly. He put the print he had kept in one of the envelopes and said, “We may as well both go, Tony,” and led the way out of the apartment.
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