by Mabel Seeley
The last words I could barely make out. Her face was shaken, too. Even she couldn’t escape the unholy irony of a thing like that.
12
BEYOND THAT, MRS. HALLORAN had little to tell me of the will. The house and five hundred a year from an already established trust to Mrs. Halloran; all the residue for the establishment of a home for animals, the honored patrons of which were to be Mrs. Garr’s own four pets.
I wondered what had become of those animals.
And how much that residue was.
One thing was proved. Except for the Hallorans, no individual stood to benefit by the will!
But I had something else to do before I went into that. As politely as possible, I shooed Mrs. Halloran into the parlor to tell her triumphs to Mrs. Tewman. Five minutes after, I was outside the house.
The curiosity seekers were gone now. Two or three men lounged around the corner; one detached himself as I walked away, I noticed, but I didn’t see him after that; he was a good shadow.
What I was bent on doing was, if possible, to find out where and when Mrs. Garr had bought her tickets. I wished I’d taken a look at the back of the ticket Mr. Kistler had; then I’d know better how good my chances were of proving Mrs. Garr hadn’t bought it. For a moment, I considered calling Lieutenant Strom’s office to ask if I might be given the important information stamped on the back of the ticket they held, but I decided against it. They’d never tell me.
The places in Gilling City where tickets were sold would turn out to be few, I hoped. I could think of only two, offhand: the regular ticket windows at the Union Station, and the branch ticket offices, which the different railroads had established around town.
And of those, to which would an old woman—inexperienced in traveling, especially in recent traveling—go?
She’d go to the station.
So did I.
Gilling City’s Union Station is one of its joys and prides. It was built in 1918 when railroads were riding high. It’s almost the size of the state capitol, and six times as pontifical. The handful of passengers who trickle through it are lost in its cavernous spaces. Twenty-four ticket windows, with their numbers over them in little lights, stretch along the west wall of the huge, seatless entrance lobby.
Fortunately for me, sixteen of the windows were black and barred; I took a deep breath and tackled the other eight.
Every face behind every window was masculine, tired, bored. Ticket sellers, I suppose, must develop immunity to questions. If they didn’t feel like answering, they just didn’t answer.
“I’m trying to find out if a woman whom we suspect was murdered”—I tried to be as brisk and official as possible—“bought an excursion ticket to Chicago here last week. You might have noticed that she had lovely white hair; beautiful white hair like sleek, shining feathers on a goose. She’d be wearing a horrible draped black chiffon turban on top of it, with withered violets to the front.” Mrs. Garr had but one hat, that I’d seen. “And she had eyes like little black coals, set deep in her head.”
I tried it on windows one, two, three, four. I didn’t even get an admission that the seller sold tickets. Just:
“No . . . no . . . no . . . no.”
The seller at window five was even more indifferent than the others, if that was possible. Bored enough to talk.
“Lady, how many people do you think I sold those tickets to? I told the police—” He halted, and an almost human look came over his face. “What did you say she looked like?”
I eagerly repeated, adding every detail I could think of.
“Say, the picture the police had didn’t look like her.”
“You mean the police were here asking the same thing?”
“Sure. This morning. Just a couple hours ago. Didn’t you know? What’re you—a reporter?”
“Sort of,” I lied. “I’m on my own, though.”
“Well, I’m glad to give a girl a hand. The police were in with this picture, see, but I couldn’t remember any dame like that buying a ticket. They said she was older, had white hair, but jeez! I didn’t remember anybody had that face. But that hair the way you say it. I lived on a farm once. We had geese on it. That’s just the same white her hair was, just like you said it; you sure said it. I noticed hair like that. Would she have a lot of pennies and nickels?”
“I wouldn’t know, but it’s very likely.”
“Well, it’s like this, see. I’d just got back from lunch, and this old dame stepped up and asked for an excursion ticket to Chicago. I told her $8.42. She says she heard it was going to be $8.00 even. And she asked was there any place she could get it for $8.00. So I told her not unless she went a couple stations down the line, and it would cost $1.76 to get there. She hauled out a ratty black bag and begun counting out the money; I never saw such a mess of pennies and nickels come into this window all the eight years I’ve been here.”
“Sixteen dollars and eighty-four cents in pennies and nickels?”
“No, lady, $8.42.”
“But she bought two tickets, didn’t she?”
“Not from me. Eight dollars and forty-two cents. One ticket.”
That stopped me. I stared at him, my mind whirling at the implication.
“Could you possibly remember what day that was?”
“What day it—it must have been Wednesday, or perhaps Tuesday. Because by Thursday we were beginning to have a lot of people. And it wasn’t a rush day. It was right after lunch.”
“You’re sure no later than Wednesday?”
“I’m awfully mistaken if it was.”
“How long are you on duty here?”
“Go to lunch at twelve thirty.”
“I’ll be back.”
I sped across the lobby to the telephone booths.
“Could I speak to Lieutenant Strom, please?”
“Who’s calling?”
“Mrs. Dacres. In connection with Mrs. Garr’s death.”
“Wait a minute.” A pause. “He isn’t in his office, but I think I can locate him.” Another pause.
“Hello?”
“Lieutenant Strom, this is Mrs. Dacres. I think I’ve found something.”
“That’s nice.”
“About that ticket. The one Mr. Kistler had. I thought if I could find out when Mrs. Garr bought hers, and then the ticket Mr. Kistler had was stamped for some other time and place, it would help prove his ticket wasn’t Mrs. Garr’s.”
“What’ve you been up to—reading that flatfoot’s mind?”
“I haven’t been reading anybody’s mind. But I think I’ve found the ticket seller. The one Mrs. Garr bought a ticket from.”
Interest sharpened his voice.
“You have? Where?”
“Union Station.”
“Where’re you now?”
“There.”
“Stay there until I get there.”
It wasn’t five minutes before he came striding across the lobby with another officer at his heels.
“Mother’s little helper,” he said wryly at me. “What window?”
“Five.”
He thrust his face at window five.
“Didn’t one of my men ask you about selling tickets to Mrs. Garr this morning?”
“Yes, sir. He showed me a picture. I hadn’t seen anyone like that.”
“Hand that picture over,” the lieutenant ordered the man at his heels. The man hauled a flat photographer’s picture out of his pocket, handed it over. I craned my neck to see it; it was a much-handled, cracked picture of a stout, sequined woman in her forties, hard face, waved hair, sporting. Mrs. Garr, twenty years before, when she hadn’t fallen apart with age.
“This the picture you saw?”
“Yes, sir.”
The lieutenant turned to me.
“This look much like Mrs
. Garr as you know her?”
“Hardly at all.” I repeated my description of Mrs. Garr as she had last looked.
“Oh, for God’s sake! You—you—” He turned wrathfully on his underling. “Where’d you get this picture?”
“The Comet, chief. It was the last one they had. You know, from when they was playin’ up the Liberry case. There wasn’t a single picture in the house.”
“If you weren’t at the bottom now I’d have you demoted.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you.” He turned to the ticket seller again. “When did you say you sold this old white-haired woman a ticket?”
Window five repeated his story. Not later than Wednesday.
“Give me that ticket.”
The flatfoot produced an envelope and from it picked the familiar Memorial Day excursion ticket.
The lieutenant turned it over on its face.
On the back was a square stamp in purple ink.
It had been sold at the Union Station on May twenty-eighth, three forty-five p.m.!
May twenty-eighth! Friday! Three forty-five p.m.! If I’d only known that! Then . . .
“There’s another check you could make,” I offered eagerly. “Someone at the house might know where Mrs. Garr was at three forty-five on Friday afternoon. Mrs. Halloran. She may still be at the house; she was there when I left.”
Lieutenant Strom turned to the man in attendance.
“You do that yet, Bill?”
“No, sir. I was still trying to prove she did buy it, not she didn’t buy it. I hadn’t got around to that yet.”
“Oh, shut up!”
Lieutenant Strom, in turn, left for the phone booths. He was gone quite a while.
“That’s that,” he said when he came back. He thanked the ticket seller.
“There’s one thing more,” I put in. “This man says he sold Mrs. Garr only one ticket.”
Lieutenant Strom had the man repeat that part of his story, then turned his hooded eyes on me.
“By heaven, if you weren’t a suspect yourself, Mrs. Dacres, I’d hire you. What else have you got on your mind?”
“Will Mr. Kistler—”
“Mr. Kistler is even now being removed from durance vile.”
“Then Mrs. Halloran did remember—”
“Yep. She swears up and down she was with Auntie at Auntie’s house Friday afternoon from two o’clock on. Helping her get ready for the trip. And Mrs. Waller backs her up. She was around, too.”
“Oh, thanks! I mean, they needed Mr. Kistler at his paper.”
“Kistler ought to pay you a lawyer’s fee. And what, if I may ask as I asked before, are you intent on doing next?”
“That part about Mrs. Garr buying only one ticket.”
“Well, that may not be important. One person. One ticket. Probably Mrs. Halloran bought her own.”
“But she didn’t. She says Mrs. Garr gave her her ticket. Gave it to her on Thursday afternoon. That would mean—”
“By God, she never meant to go to Chicago!”
“Exactly! You can’t think anything else. The whole thing sounds that way. She bought only one ticket. She wouldn’t have made two trips to buy two tickets; she was slow getting around. And then the way she acted when she was waiting for the train with Mrs. Halloran—she wasn’t used to traveling; she’d have had her ticket out and ready just as early as Mrs. Halloran, if she’d intended to go. No, she just meant to get Mrs. Halloran off!”
He took me by the elbow. People coming up for tickets were bumping me right and left; I’d been too absorbed in what I was saying to notice. But I looked up now and saw stares.
“Let’s go out in the car and talk this over.”
He propelled me out, the uniformed officer following. The police car was parked halfway down the half-moon drive in front of the station.
“Where to, sir?” the driver asked as we got in.
“Stay here awhile.”
“It wasn’t like Mrs. Garr to go to Chicago in the first place,” I began.
“Sh-sh-sh. Be quiet a minute. I want to think this over. I see you can talk and think, but I think much better not listening.”
He sat quiet for a time, his hands clasped between his knees, his face forward. Then he turned to me.
“All right. It fits with everything I know so far. I’ll agree she never intended to go to Chicago. Let’s have your version of why she pulled off this Chicago hoax.”
He hadn’t any more than asked it than I had the answer.
“She wanted to catch someone prowling in her house. Probably Mr. Halloran.”
“Repeat your evidence on what Mrs. Garr said when you told her of the prowler incident. And what she did.”
I repeated. As I looked back, it seemed obvious that Mrs. Garr had recognized my description of the prowler as Mr. Halloran. Afterward she had had that long talk with Mrs. Halloran in the parlor; had broken with her. Then, after weeks had passed, she had suddenly phoned Mrs. Halloran, had proposed this trip to Chicago. Had she done that just to catch Mr. Halloran at his pilfering?
“You’re building up a strong theory in your mind, Mrs. Dacres. Pretty contemptuous of Halloran, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am.”
“You’d rather, if this was a murder, that it would turn out he did it—rather Halloran than anyone else?”
“Well, I—”
He laughed. “Just a little Sympathetic Susie. Well, I don’t admire Halloran myself. But that doesn’t prove to me he murdered the old lady. There’s a second point to consider. Mrs. Garr may have arranged that Chicago trip for the reason you suggest. But she may have hoped to catch someone entirely different.”
“I can see that.”
“Now I’ll carry your reasoning a little further. If Mrs. Garr was so intensely afraid of pilferers, snoopers, or what have you, one might argue that she was just a timorous old woman. On the other hand, perhaps she had something she didn’t want found or stolen.”
“That’s exactly what I’ve been thinking! She might—”
“Sh-sh-sh. Don’t you know lieutenants of police are important people and shouldn’t be interrupted? Now look. We gave Mrs. Garr’s rooms a cursory search Thursday night. The only important things we found were two safety-deposit keys. We had the box opened. In it were her will, the papers for the Halloran trust fund, the deed to her house—a few things like that. No stocks, no bonds, no money. So when we read the will we saw she’d left the residue of her estate . . .” He paused to glance at me uncertainly.
“Mrs. Halloran told me.”
“Didn’t that jolt you?”
“It did, rather.”
“Well, I’ve come across a few things in my time, but that . . . ! What a combination of circumstances! Where was I?”
“She’d left the residue of her estate.”
“Yeah. So that sounded as if there ought to be a residue. And how did we spend Friday, while you were snoozing so peacefully? We went over her rooms with a comb. A damn good job we did, too.”
“Did you . . . ?”
“Yep. Five hundred and eighty-six dollars. In bills. Mostly in little bills. Stuck in the God damnedest places you ever saw. I skinned my fingers picking dollar bills from down under the strings of that doggone grand piano. Look at ’em. We found the biggest wad under the bottom drawer of that chest in the room at the top of the basement stairs.” He stopped.
“It doesn’t sound like a lot. Not compared to the trust fund.”
“No, it doesn’t. But if there’s any more I’ll eat it. And we can’t locate a bank account. On the other hand,” he went on ruminatively, “it might not be money at all some guy was hunting; the old lady was mixed up in some funny things in her day.”
He stopped, became brisk.
“Now, Mrs. Dacres, do you bel
ieve the police can handle this?”
“Yes. Oh, of course, but—”
“But what?”
“I would like to know for sure. Was she murdered or did she just die?”
He became heavily jocose. “Mrs. Dacres, you have hit on one of the most embarrassing spots in a long and honorable career. I have to admit it—I don’t know. She wasn’t shot. She wasn’t poisoned.” He laughed uproariously. “Lady, if you want to hear some stirring language, you ought to hear a police surgeon when he has to autopsy a cat—with kittens!”
“Oh, so that’s—”
“Yeah. What did you think? We were going to give ’em away to kids for pets?”
I shuddered. “No, I’m glad they’re gone. Then there wasn’t anything to tell if it was murder or not?”
“You can’t tell much from a mess like that. There wasn’t anything else out of place in the kitchen except a glass jar of dry macaroni spilled on the table. Can I drop you anywhere?”
His dismissal was as abrupt as usual.
“No. I’m going home. I’ll take the streetcar. But—”
“Another but.”
“I’d like to ask something.”
He grinned. “I wouldn’t doubt it. Ask away.”
“Would you mind if I looked around?”
“Hell no. You keep out of that back basement, of course. It’s sealed. But if you can get Mrs. Halloran’s consent, look ahead in the rest of Mrs. Garr’s rooms. Remember, you haven’t any right to look through the other lodgers’ possessions, though. Here.” He wrote a few words on a sheet torn from his notebook. “Hand that to the guy in the hall. Let me know what you turn up. Good-bye.”
From the sidewalk beside the driver, I watched him streak away. Friendly, wasn’t he? The friendship of an armed truce, waiting to jump on me the minute I made a slip. Generous with his information. Certainly. I might contribute something more.