The Listening House

by Mabel Seeley

  He moistened his lips again. “That’s all.”

  For what seemed like five minutes the lieutenant sat completely silent, to stare at them. If it had been me he stared at so, I should have wanted to break and scream; I wanted to cry aloud to break the silence as it was, yet something held me from it. Mr. Waller’s eyes were still on the spot over Lieutenant Strom’s shoulder; Mrs. Waller’s gaze stayed where it had been, on her clenched hands.

  “You can go.”

  One of the lieutenant’s abrupt dismissals.

  Mr. Waller put out a blind hand for his wife’s elbow; the two of them walked as if leaning on each other for support. We heard their heavy steps go up the stairs, sound over our heads in the hallway above. A door opened, closed. We heard no voices.

  Lieutenant Strom leaped to his feet, to walk up and down with long, hungry strides.

  “By God, I’m getting something. Did you see how scared they were? Why should they be so scared? There’s something there. I could feel it, even if I didn’t know it. July 8, 1919!”

  “But what could it be—what’s July 8, 1919? Why’s that so important?”

  The lieutenant whirled for another trip.

  “Important! What happened in July 1919? Why, nothing at all, nothing at all. Except that in July 1919 a girl named Rose Liberry was found dead in Mrs. Garr’s house. Suicide. In July 1919, Mrs. Garr’s business blew up, and it very nearly blew up the police department. By November of 1919, there wasn’t enough left of the police force that had been running the town since the turn of the century to patrol a square block. Old Chief Hartigan’s dead now. I never knew the ins and outs. But I do know there was a smell that reached to both coasts. Protection, get me? The city government was reformed so sweepingly that the whole town was done over. It’s never been the same again. And this was an old lumber city, remember that, that ran wide open up to the last ditch, and that last ditch was July 1919, when everything was blown to bits.”

  “I don’t see where it gets you in this case, though,” I put in practically. “Perfectly reasonable for Mrs. Garr to run to a man she’d been doing business with, in a pinch. That’s funny, though, about his being a liquor salesman,” I went on, remembering something. “It must have been before he got on the police force. Or else after he retired. But you’d hardly have thought he could have retired even before that.”

  If I’d thrown a bomb directly at Lieutenant Strom’s wide nose, I don’t think I’d have gotten as big a reaction. He stopped dead, stared at me so stunned he almost looked weak. Then he walked toward me; if I hadn’t known it was impossible, I’d have said he was quivering.

  “Would you say that again?” He asked it gently.

  I said it again.

  Silence.

  “Do you recall where you heard that Mr. Waller was ever on the police force?”

  “Why, certainly. Mrs. Garr told me. She said he was retired. A retired policeman.”

  “Mrs. Garr told you. And do you remember bringing out this interesting little fact in your evidence?”

  “Why, no. Why should I? You didn’t ask me if I knew anything about anyone’s past, Miss Sands’ or Mr. Kistler’s or Mr. Buffingham’s . . .”

  “Perfectly true. Why should you? Do you remember its having been brought out at the inquest in Mr. Waller’s testimony?”

  I cast my thoughts wildly back to the inquest; with surprising ease I could remember Mr. Waller talking, Mrs. Waller talking. Nothing about the period when Mr. Waller had been a policeman. But why should they say so? It was perhaps a long time ago. Perhaps for just a short time. Why should that fact have any bearing on Mrs. Garr’s death? “No, I don’t think Mr. Waller brought it up, either. Why should he? But he knows it well enough. I mentioned it to him once. I said how odd it was he retired so young.”

  The lieutenant groaned. “I don’t see how you’ve kept alive this long. As far as I can see, you know everything that everyone wants kept secret. As a finder-outer, Mrs. Dacres, you are tops. As a putter-togetherer, Mrs. Dacres, you are bottoms. I don’t suppose”—his sarcasm took on an exaggerated pathos—“you can now recall any more such little facts tucked away?”

  “They’ll probably come out in time.” I said it brightly and carelessly; he wasn’t going to step on me; he wasn’t my employer. “You ought to be glad I’m here for you to find things out of.”

  “Oh, I am,” he said. “I’m profoundly grateful.” He dropped me. He wasn’t interested in me anymore. “Gad! Waller was on the force! He has a note signed July 8, 1919. Practically an entire police force retired in 1919. If he was on the force then . . . That entire police force didn’t hold notes signed by Harriet Luella Garr! There’s something in this somewhere! If there isn’t, I’ll eat my—I’ll eat a suit of winter woolen underwear!”

  He shot me a defiant glance on that one; continued to walk in high excitement, turned to me again.

  “Mrs. Dacres! I could use you on this. Not today. What time is it? After five. Tomorrow. You’ve got the background, as I find out bit by bit. Do you want a job? You should be well enough to tackle it by tomorrow. Tonight I’m going to start going through the police records on the Liberry case again. It’ll take me a while. I’m using a fine comb this time. And you—know what you can do? You go down to the Comet office. Get their old files, beginning about May 1919. Look through every inch until you get the reports on the Liberry case. Read every word. Copy down the headlines and the first paragraph of every account for me. If there’s anything that the papers have that the court records haven’t, I want to know it. The papers played it up big. We’ve got pictures, but they’ve got pictures we mightn’t have—social pictures. Get me?”

  “I’ll get there if I have to crawl,” I said.

  We were still discussing our plans when Mr. Kistler walked in.

  “What! Still alive?” he asked. He looked a little bit worn, but he was grinning as usual. “I’ve got to get back down to the paper tonight—we distribute tomorrow, you know. But I thought I’d come around and count the latest corpses.”

  “You don’t have to worry. I’m here, Kistler.” The lieutenant.

  “That’s what does worry me.”

  “There’s been some excitement,” I said.

  “Hush,” said the lieutenant. “Secrets.”

  What didn’t he want me to tell? About the note? I turned the subject by thanking Mr. Kistler for saving my life, which he said was a small matter; he did things like that every day. Then the lieutenant put Mr. Kistler through his grilling.

  Mr. Kistler told a factual story of our activities Monday evening and until three a.m., then the now-familiar tale of his rescue on Tuesday morning.

  “Anything in that, Mrs. Dacres?” asked Lieutenant Strom when he had finished.

  “Nothing that I could hear.”

  “That’s a compliment.” From Mr. Kistler.

  “Cut it, you two. I think I heard Miss Sands come in while Kistler was talking; find out, Van.”

  “Want me to go?”

  “Suit yourself, Kistler. It won’t make any difference on this next one.”

  “Thanks.”

  Miss Sands came down looking rumpled, as if now, thank heaven, work was over for the day and she didn’t have to be so everlastingly neat. Perhaps that was why she looked, as she walked in the door, better and more peaceful than I had ever seen her. It almost seemed as if her face were less lined, as if some care had slipped from her.

  “Sit down there, Miss Sands. I’m having each person repeat his story about Monday night so Mrs. Dacres can hear it. But before you begin telling yours, I’d like to have you answer one question, please.” He paused impressively, stood up, leaned forward, thundered:

  “Why were you being blackmailed by Mrs. Garr?”

  I have seldom seen a question produce a greater change in a person. First, the peace fled Miss Sands, and then sh
e crumpled. She cowered back, her eyes fixed on Strom, helpless, at bay.

  There was a long silence. She moved her lips to speak once. The lieutenant waited. She moved her lips again; this time we heard a whisper.

  “How did you know?”

  “So she was blackmailing you!” Triumph.

  “No, oh no.”

  “Oh, she wasn’t? Then why were you paying five dollars a week for your one little room when Mrs. Dacres is paying only four for these? When you could get a better room than you’ve got for three dollars a week anytime?”

  “I—I felt sorry for her.”

  “Sorry for her. Who?”

  “Mrs. Garr.”

  “I see. Charity, eh?”

  “Yes. And then, she asked that much. She raised me.”

  “Miss Sands, how much do you make a week? Remember, I can check on it.”

  A hesitation. “We sign a slip we aren’t supposed to tell.”

  “Don’t let that bother you.”

  Another hesitation. “Well. Thirteen twenty-five.”

  I winced at the brutal department-store wage.

  “Thirteen dollars and twenty-five cents?”

  She nodded helplessly, her eyes fixed on him.

  “Five dollars from thirteen twenty-five leaves eight twenty-five a week. Eight twenty-five for twenty-one meals a week. For car fare. For doctor and dentist bills. For clothes. Have to dress pretty well in a store, too, don’t you? Weren’t you a bit overgenerous?”

  Poor thing. She sat with her forlorn poverty naked before our eyes. Cringing.

  “Miss Sands, perhaps you’d like a day or two of quiet to refresh your memory?”

  “Don’t!” I cried, and Mr. Kistler made a defensive gesture, too. Lieutenant Strom gave us only black looks for our softness.

  A new fright came into Miss Sands’ eyes. Quiet—what did that mean—jail? Her job lost. Her hands flew over her face, and she began sobbing into them, long, dry, accustomed sobs.

  I’d had enough of it. Lieutenant Strom or no Lieutenant Strom, I stood up to walk over within touching distance.

  “Whatever it is, it’s over now,” I said. “She’s dead. Mrs. Garr’s dead. And whatever it was, I don’t think you killed her.”

  Miss Sands let her hands fall as quickly as she’d lifted them; the face they’d hidden was bitter with hate.

  “She’s dead! She’s dead! I’m glad she’s dead!” Her words rang defiantly in the room. “She’s dead, but she goes right on living for me. Oh, I might have known it’d come out. I knew it’d come out, but I kept on fooling myself. Maybe, I told myself. Maybe. That’s how big a fool I was. She’s got me, living or dead. She’s got me until I kill myself. She’s got me, ever since she first got me into—that house.”

  There wasn’t any mistaking the meaning of those last two words. Miss Sands didn’t mean this house. Not 593 Trent Street. I was aghast, and even the lieutenant looked startled. I tightened my grip on her shoulder, but she jerked away from me.

  “Sure! Now you know. Now one of you can start blackmailing me. Now you can all blackmail me! Well, see if I care. I’m not so fond of working in that store. I’m not so fond of living anymore. Seventeen I was when I came to this town. Out of the country. I got a job in a store. And a man talked to me at a lunch counter one night and invited me to a party a friend of his was giving. Mrs. Garr’s house, that’s where he took me. It was two years before I could get out of there. Broke, she kept us. One night, a soldier boy going away to war slipped me twenty dollars. I got out. I hid. I did housework. I got a job in a store again. And then, one day, she came along. ‘I heard you was working here, dearie,’ she said, purring like a cat. ‘I wonder how the nice people running this store would feel if they knew what kind of a girl was working for ’em? I’ve got a new house,’ she said, ‘a nice respectable rooming house. Why don’t you come and see one of my rooms you might like to live in?’ What could I do? What could I do? The store’d let me go like a shot if they knew. Debutantes from our best families, that’s what they want working for ’em. So I went. I came here. She showed me the room upstairs and said I could live there for five dollars a week. What could I do? I couldn’t save up money enough to go away and keep me until I could get a new job, on six dollars a week—that’s what I used to get before N.R.A.—eleven dollars a week. Twelve years. What could I do?”

  Abruptly her stormy sobbing began again.

  Hodge Kistler was swearing, steady and low, his face almost dark blue. The two detectives sat stony, their eyes on the lieutenant. His voice was gentle when he spoke.

  “Miss Sands.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you kill Mrs. Garr?”

  “No, I didn’t. I often wished I would have, though. Long ago.”

  “Just the same, we’re glad you didn’t.”

  There was silence in the room for a time, except for Miss Sands’ heavy, sobbing breaths. Lieutenant Strom appeared to be thinking deeply.

  “Miss Sands, did you know a girl named Rose Liberry at Mrs. Garr’s house?”

  “No, that was soon after I got out. I saw about it in the papers.”

  The lieutenant seemed to shake his thought off, return to briskness.

  “Now, Miss Sands, what you have just told us is over. You may be certain no one here will let a word of this escape him or her. If anyone ever tries to blackmail you again, and you let me know, I can promise you that you won’t be bothered long. Nor will it become public.”

  She again dropped her hands from her ravaged face.

  “I don’t trust nobody,” she said wearily. “Okay, what’s the difference? I’ve stood plenty before.”

  “You can go in a moment, Miss Sands. I wonder if you’d repeat your story of events this last Monday night, before you go.”

  “Sure. I left the inquest with the Wallers. We ate before we came home. We talked awhile in their rooms. Then I went to bed, early. I was still sleeping when I began to hear a ringing somewhere. It was the phone. I answered it, then went up to wake Mr. Kistler. I went back to bed, but I didn’t get to sleep again before I heard Mr. Kistler yelling for Mr. Waller. I was along helping work on her for a while. Then I had to leave for the store.”

  “Don’t think I don’t appreciate your helping me,” I said warmly. “I won’t forget it if I can ever do anything for you.”

  “The best you can do for me is not know me. Can I go now?”

  “Thank you, Miss Sands. That’s all I wanted.”

  Mr. Kistler was on his feet, pacing back and forth.

  “If you find out she killed Mrs. Garr I hope you get her a reward for it.”

  “Would you be as generous as that concerning the attack on Mrs. Dacres, too?”

  Mr. Kistler stopped short. “No, I wouldn’t. Hell, I’d forgotten. I suppose we’ve got to get your murderer, baby, even if we’re sorry for her.”

  “You’re leaping too far ahead,” I said. “We’ve had other things turn up this afternoon more incriminating than this. Miss Sands’ story doesn’t prove she’s a murderer. It proves she’s weak. A stronger person would have escaped from Mrs. Garr long ago.”

  “Remember about the can of Kleenfine she was using? Or have you decided to ignore that?”

  “No, I’m not forgetting. But her whole story, if it’s true, isn’t the story of a person who would make a planned attack on me or anyone else. She hasn’t acted on life; she’s let life act on her. Look at what she said. She was enticed into Mrs. Garr’s establishment in the first place. There must have been ways in which a girl forced into such a house could have escaped, run away, reached the police, and slapped Mrs. Garr’s ears with her dirty business. But she doesn’t. She just stays there until chance lets her out. And even then she doesn’t try retribution.”

  “Your story’s all right for this year,” argued the lieutenant, “but her stor
y isn’t this year’s. It’s 1917 or 1918, maybe. Public opinion toward a girl leading that life isn’t very lenient even yet. Back then, it was likely assumed that she wouldn’t be leading it if her character was all it should be. Mrs. Garr’s business wasn’t so unusual in those days.”

  “What Lieutenant Strom so carefully avoids saying,” Mr. Kistler put in blandly, “is that Mrs. Garr was undoubtedly protected. Miss Sands could have wept at the official doors until the gaslights were drowned, but all she’d have gotten for her pains would have been the lifted eyebrow, the averted nose, and a reputation that wouldn’t get her a job in the whole town.”

  “Far be it from me to hint the police of this city were ever corrupt.” Lieutenant Strom said it lightly.

  “Just the same”—I stuck to my line—“think of this attack on me. That was a planned attack. Someone swept those stairs and provided himself with a saw—they must be fairly difficult to get, too. Someone timed the job for the first night we were without a guard. Someone provided himself with a hammer and a can of Kleenfine. Oh, it was all thought out beforehand.”

  “Different from the murder of Mrs. Garr, wasn’t it?” Lieutenant Strom brought out the analogy. “That has all the earmarks of being unpremeditated.”

  “Yes, but it doesn’t necessarily alter the psychology of the murderer. That first crime may have just happened. It was a sort of self-defense, maybe, if you can call it self-defense when a burglar defends his right to burgle. Miss Sands might have committed that kind of crime. But I don’t think she’d have had the brains—I don’t think she’d have had the character—to think up the attack on me.”

  They all laughed; men can be so infuriating. I was being perfectly logical, too.

  “Well, even worms turn; remember that.” The platitude was from Lieutenant Strom. “You can rule Miss Sands out if you want to, but she’s still a good strong suspect to me. Remember, we said Mrs. Garr’s murder was as likely to have its roots in her past as in any small sums of money she might have hidden around. All right, now we’ve found someone linked to that past. And one with a good strong motive, too. Miss Sands wasn’t trying to hide her hatred. And besides that, she had a present reason, too. How’d you feel, if you made thirteen twenty-five a week, and were blackmailed out of two dollars of it?”