The Fourth Postman

by Craig Rice

  Malone caught the glass just in time, handed it back to him and said, “My dear boy, you have no need to worry. Your uncle couldn’t be in better hands.” He spoke with all the assurance in the world, with what his friends and enemies usually referred to as his “cell-side manner.”

  Yet he felt uneasy even as he spoke. It was the very pleasantness of the atmosphere, the even tones of the voices that worried him.

  The two young people were much too calm, much too easy. He’d seen that kind of calmness and ease before. Usually, in witnesses just before they collapsed on the stand. Here were two charming youngsters who must have been devoted to old Mr. Rodney Fairfaxx, who had seen him arrested for murder and carted off to jail, and they were being calm and easy about it.

  Perhaps, he told himself, that was what came of being brought up on the right side of Chicago Avenue. Malone himself had been raised south of Twelfth Street, back of the stockyards. He instinctively expected people to swear, cry, or get drunk and beat up a policeman when a beloved relative was dragged off to jail.

  He had an uncomfortable suspicion that as soon as the house was empty of visitors Kenneth Fairfaxx was going to swear and Elizabeth Fairfaxx was going to cry. And a good thing for the both of them, too.

  As for getting drunk and beating up a policeman, he’d attend to that himself. Preferably, the policeman involved would be von Flanagan.

  “What would you say to tea?” Elizabeth Fairfaxx asked, “or a drink?”

  “To the first,” Malone told her, “I’d say ‘Heaven forbid!’ To the second, ‘Heaven be praised!’”

  She laughed easily and pleasantly and mixed him a drink that was considerably more bourbon than soda. “I hope this isn’t too strong.”

  “Personally,” Malone said reassuringly, “I always put the soda in with an eye-dropper.”

  She smiled again and said, “I’ll take you around.” Then she paused, her hand on his arm. “Mr. Malone, I hope you don’t think I—I mean, there’s no point in going to pieces just because someone—Uncle Rodney—” She paused once more, swallowed hard, and said, “It seems much more practical to be up and doing, and have all your wits about you.”

  “Much more practical,” Malone said, resisting an impulse to pat her hand. If she’d been only a few years younger he’d have had to resist an impulse to take her out and buy her an ice-cream cone.

  He liked Elizabeth Fairfaxx, liked everything about her; her long-legged, graceful walk, her loosely combed tawny hair, the scattering of freckles on her well-shaped nose, and the fact that she could carry off a situation like this one with such magnificent aplomb. On a witness stand, she’d be a sensation. He hoped she’d never be on one. Most of all, he hoped she hadn’t murdered three inoffensive and insignificant postmen.

  It was definitely a relief to sit down beside Helene after his tour of the room.

  She put down her drink and said accusingly, “You haven’t answered my question. Why did you let them take nice old Mr. Fairfaxx off to jail?”

  “I had my reasons,” Malone whispered ominously. “Now answer one for me. What the hell are you doing here?”

  Helene glared at him, a dangerous light in her blue eyes. “Where else do you think I’d be at a time like this? I’ve known the Fairfaxx family all my life.” She added indignantly, “Old Rodney Fairfaxx was my mother’s godfather. Elizabeth went to school with me. She was captain of the hockey team and president of the Junior class. I’ve still got a scar where she nicked me accidentally in a practice game.”

  “That makes you practically cousins,” Malone said. “Yes, at least that. She’s a nice girl and I admire her. Do you think she murdered those three postmen?”

  “Damn you, Malone!”

  “I was only asking,” the little lawyer said mildly. “After all, somebody murdered them. I don’t really think Mr. Rodney Fairfaxx did, and von Flanagan doesn’t really think so, either, and I know you don’t.”

  “She could have,” Helene whispered, looking at Elizabeth Fairfaxx, “but she didn’t. She—”

  “Shut up,” Malone said. “You talk too much. Just answer a few questions for me. When Elizabeth Fairfaxx dragged me around the room, meeting people, I got a lot of names, but not any details.”

  He glanced around the pleasant room, and noticed that Violet was standing near the tea table, like a slightly disapproving spectre, her thin, pale hands folded in front of her, her shadowy eyes watching Elizabeth Fairfaxx. Her hands, Malone suddenly realized, were graceful and beautiful. They looked strong, too. Again he was puzzled by the feeling that he’d seen her before. Nonsense? Since she’d been the Fairfaxx housekeeper for years and years, as Elizabeth had said, is was impossible that he could have seen her before. He put her out of his mind and began looking around at a few of the others.

  Elizabeth Fairfaxx was offering a cup of tea to Mrs. Abby Lacy. A cup of tea, a cigarette, a well-bred smile. Mrs. Lacy accepted all three, without a change of expression.

  She was a short, spare woman, with a Persian lamb coat and an expensive hat. Meticulous and determined, Malone decided. If the house next door to her burned down, she would be the first to call the fire department and start carrying out rugs and draperies. But if she’d never met the householders socially, she’d be careful to wear a hat and carry gloves while she dragged them out of their inferno.

  She had a tight little mouth, shut like a mousetrap, with the mouse inside it, and cold, squinty, weasel-gray eyes.

  “She’s very rich,” Helene volunteered. “They’re the railroad Lacys. She’s been a widow for years. And her daughter is devoted to her.”

  “That’s nice,” Malone said. “Nice for Mrs. Lacy, I mean.” He tried to imagine being devoted to Mrs. Abby Lacy, gave up and turned his attention to the daughter in question.

  “Her name is Gay,” Helene reminded him. “Gay Lacy. Her father had a very romantic nature. All the Lacys did.”

  Malone looked thoughtfully at the girl whose name sounded like an 1890 musical comedy star and tried unsuccessfully to imagine her having a romantic nature. Unlike her mother, she was tall, so that sitting beside the older woman she appeared even more gawky than she actually was; and where her mother’s hair was a dull, rather muddy gray, Gay’s was a dull and rather muddy brown. Otherwise they looked very much alike, especially as far as the look of grim determination was concerned.

  “They live next door,” Helene added. “They share a garden and the wall. Rodney Fairfaxx and Mr. Lacy were very close friends. That’s why they built their houses this way. Albert Lacy was a sweet person. I was just a kid when he died, but I remember how much I liked him. He used to take me to theaters. Real theaters, not kid stuff.”

  Malone relit his cigar and asked, casually, “What did he die of, or do you know?”

  “I don’t know,” Helene said. There was an almost acid note in her voice. “I suspect he was just tired to death.”

  Malone glanced again at Mrs. Lacy and decided the diagnosis was quite probably correct.

  “And I’m sure,” Helene said in a smugly catty voice, “that Gay and Kenneth are going to be very happy together.”

  Malone remembered with a start that Elizabeth had explained the homely angular young woman as “Miss Lacy—Kenneth’s fiancée.” The little lawyer sighed. There wasn’t anything so very special about Kenneth, but it seemed like a darn shame anyway.

  “And you met Uncle Ernie, of course,” Helene went on. “Ernest Fairfaxx, I mean. Everyone has always called him Uncle Ernie as long as I can remember. He’s Rodney’s half-brother. Something of a problem to the more conservative members of the family.”

  Malone gazed at the tall silvery-haired, handsome man leaning gracefully, though a bit unsteadily, against the mantelpiece. “Wife? Children? Home?”

  “None of them,” Helene told him. “No money, either. Ernie raised so much hell when he was a young man that his old man decided to leave him in Rodney’s charge. He lives here.” She added, “But I never heard of his having any p
articular dislike for postmen.”

  “Nobody dislikes postmen,” Malone said. “That’s why it’s so extraordinary when somebody murders three of them.”

  He looked up at the oil painting over the fireplace and momentarily lost interest in the people in the room. It showed a delicate, pretty girl in the clothes and hairdress of 1910. She had a softly rounded face, a smiling gentle mouth; her wild, lovely eyes matched the blue of her dress. Even in the painting, her yellow hair looked exquisitely soft. Her hands, folded in her lap, were tiny and very pale. For a moment, Malone wondered why the face was so familiar. Then he remembered. He’d seen it looking out at him from the large framed photograph in the library.

  “That was Annie,” Helene whispered, seeing Malone’s glance. “Annie Kendall. Uncle Rodney’s sweetheart. There’re pictures of her all over the house.”

  The little lawyer nodded slowly. It pleased him that her name should be Annie and not Anne. It seemed proper, somehow. He said, “I can understand any man not wanting to believe that girl was dead, and waiting for a letter from her all these years.”

  “You men!” Helene said scornfully. “Annie Kendall was a bitch on wheels. The only thing she liked about Rodney Fairfaxx was his money, and everybody who liked him was greatly relieved when she went down on the Titanic. Maybe it did make him a little cracked, but at least he’s been better off than if she’d come back and married him.”

  Malone muttered something in which women and cats were unflatteringly compared.

  At this point, Mrs. Abby Lacy turned her small hard eyes on the little lawyer and said, “Well, Mr. Malone. What are you going to do about it?”

  “Everything possible,” Malone said. “I assure you everything possible is being done to make Mr. Fairfaxx comfortable.”

  She sniffed and said, “I consider Rodney Fairfaxx’ being in jail in the worst possible taste.”

  “It’s a damn shame,” Malone said agreeably, “but only a few weeks ago the police department lost their copy of Emily Post.”

  Uncle Ernie considered that very funny. Mrs. Lacy considered it to be nothing of the sort. She also considered Uncle Ernie to be a disgrace, and said so. Under cover of the resulting heated conversation, Malone slipped unnoticed across the room to Elizabeth Fairfaxx.

  “I hate to abandon such an unusually pleasant gathering,” Malone said, “but it would help me tremendously if you’d show me around the grounds.”

  She grinned. “I don’t like it here, either,” she said. “Wait a minute till I get a wrap.”

  As they reached the bottom of the front steps, he said, “I really do want to look at the grounds, you know. And,” he added, “it really was a pleasant gathering.”

  “I like you much better when you’re telling the truth, Mr. Malone,” she said. Suddenly her hazel eyes flashed. “I can’t bear the thought of Ken marrying that awful woman’s daughter.” She caught her breath and said it over again, “That awful woman’s awful daughter.”

  “Maybe it’s love,” Malone said coyly. “Maybe she’s Miss Right.”

  Elizabeth Fairfaxx expressed her opinion of that theory with a very unladylike noise.

  “Of course,” Malone said, fishing for information, “you’ve probably known her a lot longer than I have.”

  “I’ve know her all my life,” Elizabeth Fairfaxx said. “She was a repulsive little girl.”

  “Was she on the hockey team at boarding school, too?” Malone asked. If so, he reflected, Helene might be able to provide still more personal information.

  “She was,” Elizabeth Fairfaxx snapped. “And by that time, she was a repulsive big girl. Let’s not talk about her. Which would you like to see first, the rose garden or the pool?”

  Malone looked around the dreary vista of half-drifted snow, dead grass, withered plants and barren trees. “I’ll save the roses until later,” he told her. “Right now, I’d like to see the spot where someone stood to kill three postmen.”

  In the neighborhood where Malone had grown up, the fortunate and looked-up-to families were those who had back yards. Those yards were usually about twenty by thirty, hemmed in by high board fences. Sometimes they showed a pathetically unsuccessful attempt at gardening. Far more often they were decorated mainly with vacant tin cans, ancient rubbish, and tired cats, but at least they were places in which to keep the younger children of the family off the streets. Malone himself had learned to walk in just such a yard which belonged to a kindhearted neighbor. Usually, however, there was no yard at all, only a tiny cement-paved areaway.

  In this neighborhood, he knew, land itself was worth fabulous sums per foot. When a bit of it was sold for a luxurious apartment hotel to be constructed, the transaction was important financial news. Thus the fact that the Fairfaxxes and other families in the neighborhood hung on to big, walled-in spaces around their homes for the sole purpose of raising grass, trees and rose bushes struck him as not only unpardonable arrogance, but unforgivable waste.

  Elizabeth Fairfaxx seemed to sense what he was thinking. “Uncle Rodney wanted to sell this place a few months ago,” she said. “He loves it, he’s always loved it, but he said it was a nuisance to keep up and entirely too extravagant in this day and age. Not that he can’t afford it. He’s very rich, you know, but he said that in the modern world, waste space was a sin and a shame.”

  Malone looked a trifle startled. The statement didn’t seem quite to fit Rodney Fairfaxx, the gentle little man who collected stamps, made no protest at being taken to jail, and still waited for a letter from a long-dead sweetheart. “Why didn’t he sell then?” the little lawyer asked.

  “Abby Lacy wouldn’t let him.” Elizabeth Fairfaxx kicked savagely at a stone and sent it hurtling down the walk. “When Uncle Rodney and Mr. Lacy built these houses, they signed an agreement that neither one of them, nor their heirs, would sell unless the other agreed.” She scowled. “And if something should happen to Mrs. Lacy, Gay is just mean enough that she wouldn’t let Uncle Rodney sell.” Her manner changed abruptly. She smiled and said, “Sorry to bore you with all this. Come on, I’ll show you around.”

  The Fairfaxx house was set in the center of its walled-in garden. Malone walked all the way around it, not only because he wanted to show proper appreciation to his guide, but because he also wanted to discover every possible way someone from outside could enter or leave the grounds. On the side away from the alley were the now desolate rose garden, some uncomfortable-looking concrete benches, and a tiny circular pool filled with mud, dirty water, and half-melted ice and snow. A pleasant enough spot in the summer, no doubt, Malone reflected, but right now—well, he’d seen a lot of far more cheerful graveyards. Beyond it was a house dimly seen through the trees. Malone pointed to it and said, “Who lives there?”

  “Nobody,” Elizabeth Fairfaxx said, in a curiously tight voice. “It’s been empty for years.” She walked on abruptly, too abruptly. Malone followed, his hands deep in his overcoat pockets. The ivied wall, he could see, extended clear through to the street on the other side without a break.

  Between the Fairfaxx house and the Lacy house was a large open space with more concrete benches, landscaped flower beds, and a tiny fountain in the exact center. Malone looked at the naked cherub holding an enormous fish in the fountain, shivered and remarked that it was unusually cold for November.

  “The other half,” Elizabeth Fairfaxx said, waving a hand toward the Lacy house, “is very much like this.”

  Malone peered around the corner of the house and saw another high iron grillwork fence. “I presume Mrs. Lacy always keeps her front gate locked,” he ventured.

  “She certainly does,” Elizabeth Fairfaxx said.

  “And the Fairfaxx gate?”

  “Always locked.” She frowned. “Are you suggesting that someone—some outsider—”

  “I’m not suggesting anything,” Malone said. “I’m just asking foolish questions.” He smiled at her. “And getting sensible answers.”

  The garage building, opening
off the alley, was shared by the Lacy household and the Fairfaxxes. It was a two-story structure, with apartments above.

  “I imagine the garage doors are also always kept locked,” Malone said.

  Elizabeth Fairfaxx nodded. For a moment their eyes met and hers were suddenly dark with misery.

  “No,” Malone said very gently, “I’m sorry, but there really isn’t any way. Not if all the doors and gates were locked, and they must have been. Or unless someone climbed over the wall from the alley. That’s physically possible, but why would an outsider go to all that trouble when he’d have to hide and then get out again, and when it would be just as easy to wait for the victim somewhere in the alley itself.”

  He knew there would be tears in her eyes and he looked away. In fact, he deliberately turned his back on her and walked along the wall that shut out the unpleasant alley with its tin cans, overflowing trash bins, and a homeless mutt. By pulling himself to the top of the wall by his elbows, he was able to get a clear view of the full length of the alley, and mark, in relation to the garden, the spot where the postmen had been standing when they fell. The homeless mutt came darting out from behind a garbage can and whined ingratiatingly. “I’ll see you later,” Malone promised as he let himself down.

  Right there, just this side of the high boxwood hedge, and partly sheltered by it, just beyond where the flagstone path which came from the side door of the house, curved away into the little formal garden. That was where the killer must have waited.

  Malone didn’t want to lift himself to the top of the wall again. It was too much effort, and besides, he didn’t want to engage in too detailed a conversation with the homeless mutt. He closed his eyes, remembering the police-drawn chalk lines showing how the body had fallen and exactly where it must have been before it so unexpectedly became a body. Malone knelt down and examined the ground. No footprints. That was not unexpected, considering the thickness of the grass. He ran his fingers carefully over the turf. No indentations, either, such as would have been made by even a fairly light weight man standing on something that would enable him to see, and reach, over the top of the wall.