by Mabel Seeley
The Hallorans appeared impervious to objective insult.
“No.” I hated to give them up as suspects, but surely an alibi such as this could be checked thoroughly for holes. With those children, anyone present would have kept them under observation.
“That’s all now.” So Lieutenant Strom said to the Hallorans. They pushed and clattered out; we heard them in various stages of vociferation all through the house the rest of the afternoon. It was the first time the family had visited, en masse, their new possession. I rather wondered that they hadn’t moved in. But it was less than a week, after all, since Mrs. Garr’s death had become known. Less than a week! How much had happened in that time! How much must still happen!
If the Hallorans did move in . . . I shuddered. I’d have to move out. But not before this mystery was cleared up. No one was going to nine-tenths murder me and go scot-free, if I could help it.
“Call the Tewmans, Van.”
Mrs. Tewman and the rabbity man came in. They, too, must have been in the hall, waiting for this.
“Now, Mr. Tewman, I want to ask you a question. Can you use the same saw on steel you can on wood?”
“Saw?”
“Yes, saw.”
“I dunno. I guess so.”
“Ever see any saws around this house?”
“Saws? Yeah, I guess so. Saw in the toolbox. Under the washtubs.”
“Oh hell, I’ll never get anywhere this way. You go ahead and repeat your story about where you were Monday night.”
“Well, chief, I was at the inquest, see?” The man was trembling a little. “I’m on nights at my hamburger house, see, because my brother’s on daytimes and I’m on nights. So my wife comes back to this house here to get our stuff, and I go right on down to my business. My brother is there, and we talk over this inquest, see, until he goes home around nine o’clock. And it’s like I said, chief, I can prove I didn’t leave my business one minute because, why, the place it’s in, there wouldn’t be one stick left in it when I come back if I’d went away. And it’s still all there.”
“That’s a damn good piece of logic,” the lieutenant said to me. “That story checks, too. We hunted up a couple customers. Now for you, Mrs. Tewman.”
“I come right on back to the house.” Her sullen voice held anger. “And I wasn’t going to stay in it a minute I didn’t have to, either, with that Mrs. Halloran bossing around. So the minute I seen there wasn’t a cop in the hall, I went down and packed up quick. I took our stuff over to Jim’s brother’s house and stayed there. You ain’t going to get me back here, either.”
“No, Mrs. Tewman, I think we’ll let you stay away. You left your key?”
“Right on top of the bookcase in the hall.”
“You see?” To me. “The key was there. Of course it’s possible for the Tewmans or the Hallorans to have had a duplicate key made, or to have sent someone else here Monday night. But I doubt it. Such a person wouldn’t know enough about the house.”
To the Tewmans he added, “You may go now.”
They went with alacrity.
“I called those four witnesses first for a reason, Mrs. Dacres. I’m convinced that they had nothing whatever to do with the attack on you, and therefore, since we think the two are related, with the attack on Mrs. Garr. For my part, I intend to eliminate them in my further search for the criminal. But it’s different with the rest of the people I’m interviewing. It’s my best opinion that every one of them is strongly to be suspected!”
* * *
—
MY MIND RANGED RAPIDLY over the rest of the people who were connected with Mrs. Garr’s house.
“What do you mean?” I asked flatly.
“Well, look at this thing. Was it someone outside the house? No. It was someone who had access, easy access, to the cellar. Who knew the house and the habits of its inmates thoroughly. If the murderer isn’t one of the residents here I’ll eat all my notes.”
He gave me a side glance.
“After I had to eat that money you and Mrs. Halloran dug up I’m not taking chances with any more paper diets, either. Who do we have as possibilities, then? First, Kistler. Plenty easy for him to have sneaked downstairs again after three a.m., Mrs. Dacres?” He grinned. “Somehow you don’t seem the suicide type, and it’s very difficult to bat yourself on the head first and then chloroform yourself second.”
“By the way”—I was curious—“did you ever find what hit me?”
“Sure. Didn’t I tell you? Hammer from the toolbox downstairs. Not a print on that, either. That’s another argument it was someone in the house. Knew where the tools were.”
I shuddered.
“All right. Where were we? Kistler. Buffingham. Grant. Miss Sands. The Wallers. Six people. If it isn’t one of those six people I’ll eat—no, I guess I better quit eating.”
“I don’t think it was a woman. I think it was a man. Except that Miss Sands does have that can—”
“Sure. Except. Except. And if it was the Wallers they must both be in on it. They stick together on their story, anyhow. So that really makes just five possibilities.”
“Too bad you can’t just put all six in jail.”
“You don’t know how I wish I could. Innocent till proved guilty, pooey. Let’s have Buffingham down, Van.”
Van came back alone.
“Gone to work. Gus in the hall here says Johnson’s tailing him.”
“Hell, what’s the matter with me? He would be. Have to wait for him, then. I’ll take Grant.”
Poor old Mr. Grant came in blinking as usual. Again I thought that he had aged, shriveled in this one week, as if something had gone out of him. He was patently nervous, baked as if he hadn’t slept much.
The lieutenant explained the reasons for this second questioning.
“As I told you yesterday, sir”—Mr. Grant sat well forward on his dinette chair, his hands on his knees—“I was upset by the inquest. I kept thinking about—well, thinking. I dined downtown. I walked home from town. I went up to my room and endeavored to read, but my attention wandered. That was how I spent the entire evening.”
“You read all evening?”
“Well, I looked over a few old keepsakes in my trunk for a time.”
“How late was it when you went out?”
“About eleven, I think.” Apologetically.
“You in the habit of walking so late at night?”
“I have been this past week.” He smiled faintly. “You should know. I have seen one of your men following me.”
Lieutenant Strom grunted. “Okay.”
“I walked down the steps to Water Street and wandered about down there. I was nervous. A great many things had come up at the inquest which disturbed me.”
“Yeah? What things?”
“The provisions of the will. Irony. A wicked woman, coming to her just deserts.”
The lieutenant’s voice was low.
“So you think Mrs. Garr got no more than was coming to her.”
Mr. Grant straightened, and his words left no doubt of what he thought.
“I could not have wished her a more fitting death,” he said quietly.
18
WE ALL STARED AT Mr. Grant. Meek, quiet little Mr. Grant!
The lieutenant snorted, half rose, sat down again.
“You didn’t bring this up yesterday! What reason, may I ask, did you have for wishing Mrs. Garr any kind of death?”
Mr. Grant contemplated him passively.
“The inquest reminded us all of the evil in Mrs. Garr’s past, did it not? She was a woman who had brought sorrow of the most—the most agonizing kind. On hundreds. On mothers of innocent girls, mothers who died crying aloud—” He pinched his lips together, paused a moment before he continued. “Surely it is just that such a woman should meet a horrible end.”
<
br /> The lieutenant’s voice was as quiet.
“And what does this mean to you, to you personally, Mr. Grant?”
Mr. Grant’s hands fell listlessly between his knees.
“Oh, nothing, nothing. I merely saw in it the workings of an awful Providence.”
“You didn’t help Providence?”
“No, I”—he turned his hands outward—“I didn’t help.”
“Well!” The lieutenant took a deep breath, settled back in his chair. There was something strange in Mr. Grant’s attitude. When he said he had not helped Providence, it was almost as if he were defending himself; as if he should have helped Providence and hadn’t. I could see the lieutenant tearing at that, then deciding to be jocose but watchful.
“You don’t have to feel bad because Providence got along without you. Now go back to your walk.”
“I came up the steps, to Adams again. I idled down past Elliott House until a man came up from the opposite way. I recognized Mr. Buffingham. He was returning from work. We came back to the house together, separated in the hall upstairs. I was awakened by the disturbance yesterday morning.”
“You ever do any sawing, Mr. Grant?”
Mr. Grant looked blank surprise. “Why, as a boy on my father’s farm, I occasionally assisted with the sawing of the winter wood supply.”
“What’s a steel saw look like?”
“Why, I don’t know. I never saw—”
“What do you think it would look like?”
“Why, quite a bit like a wood saw, I should think. Finer, perhaps. And stronger, of course. I didn’t suppose steel could be—but yes, yes, I suppose it can. Even diamonds can be cut.”
He peered at us over his heavy glasses, obviously at a loss over the last questions.
“That’ll do. You can go.”
“Food for thought in that guy,” the lieutenant said after Mr. Grant had left. “If we could prove he had some connection with Mrs. Garr in the past—but we can’t. I had two men working on his past for two days last week. Didn’t know I went into things so thoroughly, did you? We can’t find any record he was in the city until four years ago; he turned up then in a downtown hotel. His own evidence is he came from Detroit. Retired bookkeeper. Plenty of Grants in old Detroit directories, but, my God—we can’t follow them all up! Moved to this house soon after he came in town, lived here since. Lives off a bunch of US bonds, he says. I wish I could find out if Mrs. Garr ever put anything across on him. He isn’t the type to murder for a few cents, but he could well enough murder to get even with an old hate.”
“He doesn’t have an old hate against me, though,” I pointed out. “I can’t imagine Mr. Grant coming—coming—”
“Don’t forget you’re the only one heard that key fall. And you’d been upstairs asking some mighty leading questions.”
“That would mean he wanted to kill me to protect himself. He looks as if he wouldn’t much care what happened to him. Apathetic.”
“You psychology fiends.” Lieutenant Strom sounded apathetic himself. “Let’s see. Kistler. Still at work, I suppose. What time’s it getting to be? Four? Well, we’ll have to wait for Sands, then, too. Let’s have the Wallers down.”
My heart beat fast as the Wallers came in. Was the lieutenant going to throw the word “blackmail” at them? I wondered why they hadn’t been down to see me before today; I was certain that, when I first regained consciousness the day before, Mrs. Waller had been working over me. Mr. Waller had helped break down the door, too. But if they had been back since to inquire how I was, I hadn’t heard of it. If they noticed me at all now as they walked in, it was only a quick glance.
They stood before Lieutenant Strom; he had chairs placed for them; they sat. The expressions on their faces were oddly similar. Poker faces. But behind the masks was apprehension.
“Waller,” the lieutenant began in a friendly way, “would you repeat everything you know of what happened Monday night, for Mrs. Dacres’ benefit?”
Mr. Waller told of returning from the inquest with his wife and Miss Sands, of having dinner downtown, of talking in their apartment, of sleeping until wakened by Mr. Kistler’s call up the stairs about six o’clock on Tuesday morning. He and Mrs. Waller had both stayed to help the doctor. For the first time I heard some of the gorier details.
I thanked them as nicely as I knew how.
When they had both given their stories the lieutenant sat quiet for two ticking seconds before he spoke again.
“Now, Waller, I’m going into something that may be a purely personal matter.” He dropped politeness. “Why in hell didn’t you include in your previous evidence that you held a note of Mrs. Garr’s?”
Mr. Waller stiffened, and I saw Mrs. Waller’s fat pink hands clasp in her lap until they were white along the knuckles. She began trembling slightly; I could see the black lace of her revers shake. Mr. Waller’s eyes avoided the lieutenant’s.
“It didn’t have anything to do with Mrs. Garr dying. It was just a private matter.”
“It would have been a God damn good reason for a fight with Mrs. Garr that might have ended in her death.”
“I didn’t fight with Mrs. Garr.”
“That’s your story. I’ve heard from others that she asked you to move out of her house. Now let’s have your story on why Mrs. Garr owed you money.”
“I loaned her the money a good many years ago.”
“What for?”
“What for?” He moistened his lips. “I guess she needed some money.”
“Hm. Waller, Mrs. Dacres says that when Mrs. Halloran came back from asking you why you paid no rent, she said she saw the note.”
Mr. Waller was silent.
“Why haven’t you presented that note to the estate for collection?”
“I didn’t want to be hasty. I thought I’d wait.” His eyes were focused on a point just over the lieutenant’s head.
“Thought you’d wait until the police were out of it, eh?”
“Oh no. I thought I’d just wait until—until it would seem more decent.”
“I see, just being considerate. Just being considerate about two thousand bucks. Mrs. Halloran, you see, was impressed by the amount.” He leaned forward. “Would you mind telling me when that money was borrowed?”
Mr. Waller swallowed, paused. “That—that has no connection. No connection at all.”
The lieutenant thundered in his strongest voice. “You’ve got that note on you, Waller. I ask to see it.”
“It’s purely personal. I’m not going to hand it over.” Mr. Waller fought back desperately.
“We’ll see about that. Van and Bill, do your stuff.”
The lieutenant’s two huge henchmen advanced on Mr. Waller, no doubt of their intentions and abilities in their stride.
Mr. Waller stared at their advance for a frozen second.
“No! Wait! I—it isn’t important enough to make a fuss over, Lieutenant Strom. I’ll let you see the note.”
The two henchmen fell back. Mr. Waller got to his feet, swaying a little; he took a wallet from his inside coat pocket, fumbled inside it, took from it a dirty piece of paper, folded once, which he laid before the lieutenant.
We waited while Lieutenant Strom, his face impassive, stared at the paper, folded it carefully away in his own wallet. But his eyes when he lifted them were alight, and his voice rang.
“You’ll get it back. It’s evidence now. Waller, that note is dated July 8, 1919! July 8, 1919! Will you please tell me what dealings you had with Mrs. Garr in the year Mrs. Garr went to jail?”
The excitement in his words was unmistakable. July 8, 1919, the lieutenant had said, as if that date were of surpassing importance, as if the key, the start of all this mystery, might have been that day, that month, that year; as if, stumbling in the dark, he had suddenly had a lamp thrust in his hand,
and the lamp’s light had illuminated that date.
Mr. Waller backed to his chair, lowered himself into it with a careful, steadying hand on its back. His face was white, hard white.
“She came to me. Came to me for money.”
“Why to you?”
“I’d been to the house. I’d been there—selling. She knew I’d made some money.”
“Selling what?”
“Liquor.”
“Bootlegging?”
“No. Prohibition wasn’t—was it in yet? I sold on commission.”
“I see. So she just hunted you up. Said she needed money.”
“That was it.”
“Ever find out why she needed money?”
“Oh yes, it came out. It was in the papers.”
“You’re referring to the Liberry case?”
“I—yes.”
“So you financed her trial.”
“Oh, it must have cost her more than what she borrowed from me.”
“This two thousand dollars the entire sum you lent her?”
“No, there was more. Three thousand more. She paid that back.”
“But not the two thousand. She didn’t pay the two thousand back, while she was what I’d call squandering twelve thousand bucks on a trust fund for the Hallorans. That’s more generous than I’d have said she was. Ever say why she didn’t pay off this note?”
“She wouldn’t. Said we could take the interest out in living here.”
“Mrs. Dacres testified to hearing Mrs. Garr quarrel with you. She wanted you to leave the house.”
“Yes, that’s true. She was getting old. Old and, I think, queer.” He was answering quickly, desperately, as if this were at once uncertain and rehearsed. “She seemed to believe that the note wasn’t good anymore, because it was so old. She said she wasn’t going to pay it.”
“That sound reasonable to you, Mrs. Dacres?”
“It sounds characteristic,” I said.
“Waller, that’s absolutely all there is to this note?”