by Mabel Seeley
“I can too be. I should know.”
He stood up, yawned, shook himself.
“All you get is orange juice. The doctor said so. Nothing yesterday. Orange juice today.”
That was all I did get, too, all day long. We fought about whether I was to get up, too; he called the doctor by phone and came back disgruntled.
“The doc says all right, get up, if you’re so damn healthy. Go back to bed the minute you feel weak. I don’t see why you don’t feel weak; I do. And oh, gosh, I’ve got to go to work. It’s Wednesday, do you know that? Wednesday. I’m going to tell that cop to keep an eye on you.”
The first thing I did when I got on my feet was to turn off the ceiling light. I stood in the middle of my bed-living-dining-room floor, reorienting myself.
Heavens, things were in a mess. Newspapers, magazines, books strewn on the floor. The drawers of the buffet yawning, their contents tumbled and spilling over. The lower drawer was entirely out; it stood on the floor. Dishes were pushed about in the cabinet above.
I didn’t get it. Even if the people who’d dragged me back to life had needed to find things in a hurry, they needn’t have made a mess like this. It was willful, malicious!
I walked toward the passageway to my kitchen. Here, too, on the right of the little hall, drawers had been pulled out, their contents jumbled. Heartsick, I looked into my closet—all my clothes off their hangers, lying in tumbled heaps on the floor; my trunk was open and its contents thrown to right and left.
The kitchen was in the same state. Mrs. Garr’s closet was worst.
I got it then.
And stood there thinking what a fool I was.
I hadn’t told the police about the closet Mrs. Garr retained in my kitchen. I hadn’t even thought of it.
Coming and going in that kitchen, I hadn’t even thought of it as a place to search. It seemed incredible, now, that I hadn’t. When I’d first moved into the place I’d been annoyed at Mrs. Garr’s holding this corner of my domain. But, except for one time, she hadn’t bothered me to get into it. I’d forgotten it was there. I no more thought of it as existing than I did the unused basement stairs beside it. I bent (careful, my head) to pick up an old-fashioned, mothbally mink jacket from the floor; it was torn, slashed. I picked up other garments. A musty hat, torn savagely. A faded, padded sachet, ripped. Boxes and small keepsakes lay together in the heap.
I had it, all right, then. Someone had been ransacking my apartment. On purpose.
I had proof now. There was a prowler. He hadn’t found what he wanted in Mrs. Garr’s part of the house. So now he had searched mine.
That was why I’d been attacked. He had to get me out of the way.
What was he hunting? What, in heaven’s name, could arouse this frenzied seeking? Had he found what he wanted? Found it, here in this closet?
I got dizzy, standing there, and staggered back to bed.
I drank more of the orange juice Hodge had left on the table there. It didn’t help much. Orange juice may be full of vitamins, but bacon and eggs keep a body upright. My body rested on the couch but my mind kept working.
What was this insatiable marauder hunting? Money? More money? He must already have found some, between that Friday and the Thursday when the death was discovered; the police, Mrs. Halloran, and I had found the well-hidden caches; these were probably only part of the whole. Suddenly I knew why the macaroni had been spilled on the table below; there had been money hidden there, deep within. I had proof that some of Mrs. Garr’s money had been found, perhaps—that torn five-dollar bill. Someone must want money desperately.
Mr. Buffingham with his son in jail, needing lawyers, needing bought witnesses. Mr. Grant, living there, old, not working, liking luxury. What did he live on? Miss Sands. Aging. Hating her job and afraid of losing it. The Wallers, living there on odd jobs, rent-free. The greedy Hallorans. The poor Tewmans.
And, to be consistent, Mr. Kistler, struggling to keep his Guide alive. And for the matter of that, Mrs. Dacres. Jobless.
Who didn’t want money?
No, I thought. If it’s money, it must be a lot of money.
Someone knows there’s one big pile somewhere. A big pile, that Mrs. Garr would hide best of all, of course. She was shrewd. The ransacker had taken what money he found. There never had been any left among the things ransacked.
Did that prove it was money he was after? No, that just showed he took what he found. What else could there be? Some record out of Mrs. Garr’s lurid past? Some incriminating record? Who could be seeking such a thing?
Ever since I’d seen that rent-receipt book on Saturday afternoon, I’d suspected Mrs. Garr was probably blackmailing two boarders. Miss Sands. Why would an aging saleswoman pay blackmail? Yet how else explain five dollars a week for that room? And Mr. Buffingham. Well, some escapade of his son’s was the best guess there.
I might know, too, of two who were potentially blackmailing Mrs. Garr. The Wallers. Even if they did produce a note, for what did she owe them that two thousand dollars? No, the rent they didn’t pay made them suspect.
The Hallorans. It wasn’t unlikely Mrs. Garr held notes of theirs for money she’d given them. Was there a record of some debt that was being sought? And whatever it was, had the end come now? Was the attack on me, the pillage of my rooms, the last link in the chain? Had the prowler found there, at last, what he hunted?
The answer was right there in my living room.
No, it hadn’t been found.
No one would have been too stupid not to search Mrs. Garr’s closet first. If what was hunted had been found there, the search would have ended.
But it hadn’t.
It had gone on through my entire apartment. The disorder here was no red herring. I could have done a neater job, but not a more thorough one.
I knew well enough that there was nothing hidden among my things.
There was only one conclusion to draw. The hunter was still unsatisfied.
I closed my eyes and wondered if I’d be able to live through what was bound to come.
Right there, I quit the Garr case as fun. I went into it as battle: I get the murderer before he gets me.
Skirmishes began with the doorbell’s ring, the door’s opening, heavy feet in the hall. Lieutenant Strom, flanked by two men, stood beside my bed.
“Well, coming around?”
“I’m practically bursting with health.”
“That’s one gray hair less on my head. I regret very much that this has happened, Mrs. Dacres. If you want to light into me, go right ahead.”
“You still think Mrs. Garr’s death wasn’t murder?”
He sat down in the armchair and sighed.
“Mrs. Dacres, did you ever spend any thought at all on why society makes such a hue and cry about murder? After all, by and large, I’ve found out that a good many people who get murdered leave the world better off for their absence. Now, this is the way I look at it. One person kills another, willfully or accidentally. Society feels, naturally, that such a crime should be punished.
“But look at that punishment. It usually consists, or is supposed to, of removal from society—complete excision—either by life imprisonment or death. Why—punishment? Vengeance? Retribution? Not entirely. To cure the murderer of murdering? We haven’t found that murder is curable. To stop other people from murdering in their turn? It doesn’t work that way; new murderers spring up under the harshest laws.
“No. It’s because a person who has killed once, and gotten away with it, is so likely to kill again. It’s to remove a menace from people still living.
“Now, you take Mrs. Garr. We can’t prove she didn’t die a natural death. The simplest explanation, and the one that takes in everything that happened, is that she died naturally. And if she was assisted to die, what’s the likelihood that she was pushed over by some surpris
ed prowler? She had a bad heart. Now, few sneak thieves intend murder. He’s out for small stuff. No gun on him; he didn’t shoot her. No poison administered. The thief’s scared, runs. We catch and punish him if we can, but if we can’t, then what? He isn’t the type to murder again. Come along with me so far?”
“I see your argument.”
“That’s the way things looked up until Monday night. We meant to keep an eye on things here, sure. Officers were ordered to patrol this block.”
“It’s nice to be so well protected.”
“Have your sarcasm. Oh, what a different tale you’ve made out of this!”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that it’s become attempted murder. Good, solid, tangible attempted murder, with clues. I’m out to get someone now. Oh, yes, indeed. A deliberate attack! Now we know the guy’s dangerous. Now we know he’s the type that kills again. Now we’ve got to pick him off society like a flea off a dog, and see he doesn’t get back. We can’t have him killing off perfectly good, healthy young women”—he smiled slowly down—“damn nice young women, in their own peculiar way.”
“Norwegians shouldn’t kiss the blarney stone,” I said. “It isn’t in character. I’m glad to know I’m so important.”
“You’re going to have all the importance you can stand today. Because I’m going to get every person who was or could have been under this roof for chloroforming purposes that night come in here and repeat the stories they told me yesterday. I’ll catch any discrepancies, and you catch any false note, any surprising emotion, anything you think is significant. Fortunately we’re confined to people who could have known about Mrs. Garr’s keeping things in that closet in your kitchen. By the way, isn’t that another item you forgot to tell me?”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re suffering for it yourself. Will that teach you to tell the police everything?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Think you can stand having me start on witnesses today?”
“Oh my, yes.” I sat up in bed, had pillows piled behind me, and almost forgot I’d had no food. “But I want to know what happened, first! I haven’t been told one word!”
He laughed. “I can imagine the rapacious state of your mind. Okay, here goes, as testified. You celebrated the inquest with Mr. Kistler, imbibing well and on the whole wisely. Correct?”
“Correct.”
“You come home at three a.m. or thereabouts, handling yourself ably. You say good night to Mr. Kistler at your door, after having turned on your light, looked the apartment over, and reported all okay.”
“Right.”
“Mr. Kistler’s testimony. That is all we know of you for some time. Tuesday morning comes. Six o’clock. The telephone rings. It rings and rings. It finally awakens Miss Sands, upstairs. She comes down, answers. It is for Mr. Kistler. She goes up, knocks at his door until he answers. Mr. Kistler, furious, comes downstairs. It turns out the call is from Mr. Trowbridge, who, it seems, is out celebrating because the Guide has secured a big advertising contract—”
“Oh, and Hodge didn’t tell me! That must be the one he was after Saturday!”
“Yep. Guy came through on Monday. Mr. Trowbridge, it seems, celebrates neither well nor wisely, and has suddenly been stricken with a desire to know how the inquest came out. It is the very shank of the evening, to him. Mr. Kistler hangs up, starts back to bed.
“A thought hits him and he stops on the first step. Why did Miss Sands answer the phone?
“Her room is upstairs, far from the phone. Your bed, on the contrary, is right on the other side of the wall. You are in the habit of rushing out to answer. He decides it is because of the evening before, and turns to the stairs again, when something else hits him.
“A smell.
“He walks over to your doors, sniffs, and then sniffs under the doors. He gets it strong there—ether and naphtha. Why would you be dry-cleaning, coming home at three a.m.? Before six a.m.? He knocks softly, you don’t answer. He calls, you don’t answer. He takes a run and tries to break the doors down, but they’re reinforced by those chairs under the knobs and won’t give an inch.”
“Oh, my goodness,” I said.
“What?”
“The chairs. The chairs were still under the knobs?”
“I’ll say they were.”
I sat up straight and felt the blood draining out of my face.
“Then how did he—it—get in?”
Lieutenant Strom shook his head at me soberly.
“I’ve gone over this damn apartment inch by inch. I can’t find one way anyone could have got in. Or out.”
I stared at him, horror gripping me. What had been there in that room?
17
“LISTEN,” I SAID, “I can’t stand this. Not without something to eat. Can’t I have something to eat?”
“Go call the doc, Van.”
Van phoned, came back.
“Nothing but fruit juice till tomorrow, miss.”
I used to like orange juice, too.
“I want to be shown,” I said when I’d had it. “I want to be shown how no one got out or in.”
“Okay, I’ll fix it up just like it was before the doors were broken down. I was going to go over that anyway. So you can just as well see it at the same time.”
“First tell me the rest.”
“The rest was hard labor. Kistler got Waller down, and the two of them busted the lock; the chairs fell when the doors pushed open; your key was still in one of the locks. They rushed in, pulled up the shades, and there you were, with a big wad of cotton batting covering your face, still sopping with the God damn dry cleaner. Kistler did a lot of work on you, young lady. If you’re glad to be alive yet, you can thank him for it.”
“He is nice, isn’t he?”
“Sure. Even men think he’s nice.”
“That proves it. I’ll do a nice job of thanks. No sign of where the ether came from?”
“Oh, sure. Empty can by the couch. Kleenfine.”
A picture flashed back into my mind.
“Oh, my goodness! Miss Sands!”
“What’s that?”
“Miss Sands. I was upstairs to ask her a question. She was pressing clothes. And cleaning spots off them with a dry cleaner on a rag. I saw the can.”
“Kleenfine?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I brought that out yesterday, in a way. Asked them all if they had a can. She admitted it. She and Mrs. Waller both did. It’s a common home cleaner. They both showed me their can, partially full. You can’t base much of a case on that alone. Anyone can buy it.”
He was eyeing me narrowly.
“It’s the sort of plan a woman would think of,” I began slowly.
“Um. Before we go into that, there’s something I want to go into with you. What did you go upstairs to ask Miss Sands?”
“Oh. Well, I was hot on the trail of Mr. Halloran then. And I was thinking about the cat in the hall at ten o’clock. Someone caught it and put it back in the kitchen before midnight. So I went up to ask if anyone had seen or heard anyone who might have done so.”
His eyes were hard on my face.
“Who’d you ask?”
“Why, Mr. Buffingham first, and then Mr. Grant, Miss Sands, the Wallers. Mr. Kistler wasn’t home either time, of course. None of them had heard anything.”
Lieutenant Strom sat forward impressively.
“Has it penetrated your little noodle that a lot worse things happened to you night before last than were necessary to keep you out of the way of a little ransacking? If you’d been found two hours later than you were, probably only one hour later, you would have been dead. Whoever came here that night came with deliberate intent to murder. To murder you.”
“Oh my,” I said as if I were Mrs. Halloran. “It sounds
awfully bloodthirsty when you put it that way.”
He snorted. “That isn’t what you should be saying. You should be asking a question.”
“Why, you mean?”
“Exactly.”
“Well, I was in the way. And then I have sort of been nosing around, you know.”
He snorted again. “Do I know!”
“But it doesn’t do me any good to pull in my horns now,” I pointed out. “Because whatever I’ve done to make someone want to murder me, I’ve already done. Or if it’s something I know, I already know it. I can’t undo it or unknow it. The only thing I can do is go ahead and get him before he gets me.”
“Dacres the lionhearted. You might acquaint me with a few of your hidden secrets.”
“Well, of course it’s too late to tell you about the closet in my kitchen. I really forgot that myself.”
“Former comment repeated.”
“Then there’s the receipt book. I found that on Saturday when you gave me permission to look through Mrs. Garr’s things, and Mrs. Halloran and I found the money. I haven’t seen you since, you know. I don’t suppose your fat detective told you how much time I spent looking at that receipt book?”
“No!”
I told him all about it then. He was very much interested in my theory that the high rents paid by Miss Sands and Mr. Buffingham represented blackmail, and that the Wallers in turn had been blackmailing Mrs. Garr. Then I told him what I’d deduced that morning from the state my rooms were in, but he only listened with half his mind to that, and said yes, he’d thought the same thing.
He got up briskly when I ended, and said he was going to work on how my would-be murderer had gotten in and out of my apartment. I got out of bed and into my negligee and slippers. I showed him how I fixed the doors at night; the metal lock of my double doors hung by a shred now, but when we forced the doors together and hooked the chairs under the knobs they were still tight, even without the lock.
With his two flanking detectives, he spent a good half hour on those doors, examining the hinges, the casings, the knobs. Van got on the outside to force the doors; the chairs fell with a clatter that would have waked me a dozen times over even if I’d been drunk, which I wasn’t.