The Listening House

by Mabel Seeley

  I thought it over. “I’d have watched until I knew where some of the little piles of money were. Then I’d have grabbed my chance to get my own back, and left for sunnier climes.”

  “She admits she’s an honest girl.”

  “I don’t mind being a stooge for a laugh.”

  “Laugh nothing. Don’t you realize that’s exactly what Miss Sands may have done? She was caught hunting Mrs. Garr’s money and killed her.”

  19

  THERE WAS STILL ONE more interview that Wednesday: Buffingham’s. The lieutenant had Van call the Elite Drugstore where Mr. Buffingham worked, and order him to return to the house during his supper hour. He came to the house shortly after six; the lieutenant called him in impatiently. Strom was all keyed up by that time, anxious to get at the Liberry case records, anxious to go over them completely, now there was the possibility between Mr. Waller and Miss Sands of a connection with that old case.

  Mr. Buffingham slouched in, haggard as he always was; his eyes traveled aloofly from one to the other of us, as unfriendly and as unexpecting of friendliness as if he were of one kind, we of another; as if there never was and never would be much kinship in his life, never anything except the world’s hand against him.

  He had a son.

  I suppose there isn’t any tragedy in the world more heartrending, I thought, looking at him, than being the father of a baby that turns out wrong. Of waiting and thinking about the baby that’s coming, afraid and secret and proud; of having the baby be born and going in to see it with its mother, glad and tender. Of wondering all the years as the baby grew whether he should say yes, he could go to all the movies he wanted to, or no, no more movies, too exciting; or yes, an allowance, or no, learn to earn; or yes, I’ll get you a baseball, or no, I wish you wouldn’t play with the Smith boy. Mr. Buffingham was worn with the grief of having made the wrong decisions.

  The lieutenant was looking at him, too. As if idly, while he told the reason for this second questioning.

  Mr. Buffingham’s story was simple. Worked until midnight.

  Walked home. Car in garage for repairs. Met Mr. Grant near Elliott House. Walked in with him. Wakened by racket Tuesday morning.

  “A new bit of information has come to hand,” said the lieutenant as Mr. Buffingham finished. There was bite under his carelessness. “Enjoy being blackmailed, Buffingham?”

  Mr. Buffingham’s dark eyes made a quick swing from face to face, but his mouth was imperturbable.

  “Who, me?”

  “Yes, you.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “You, Buffingham, paying blackmail.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Oh no, I’m not.”

  “What’ve I done to be blackmailed for?” Mr. Buffingham’s eyes were very careful.

  “That’s what I want to know.”

  I saw it, we all saw it. It couldn’t be concealed.

  Relief.

  Mr. Buffingham was relieved when the lieutenant said he’d like to know what for. He was still worn, still harried, but the new fear that had crept back of his eyes when the lieutenant first said “blackmail” had crept away again.

  “What could anybody blackmail me for?” he demanded now, truculently. “I ain’t done nothin’. Just because my boy got in a little trouble, here, you’re going to try to hang something on me, too, huh?”

  “How much you getting at the Elite, Buffingham?”

  “Eighteen per. It’s a lousy joint.”

  “Eighteen dollars a week?”

  “That’s it.”

  “You insist on that?”

  “Sure, that’s what I’m getting. Ask the old man if you don’t believe me.”

  Soft and smooth. “Nine dollars a week is a lot for your room upstairs, Buffingham.”

  Again Mr. Buffingham’s eyes made their darting round.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Oh, you mean what I been paying old lady Garr recently?” He threw back his head to laugh loudly. “So that’s where you got your blackmail, huh? She would leave the receipt stubs around, wouldn’t she? Old lady Garr! That’s good!” He stopped laughing as if it were turned off by a spigot. “I owed her some back rent, see. No job for a while. And the old lady staked me to the room, see? But jeez, blackmail wasn’t so far off, at that. I been paying three times over for that room ever since I got a job again. I’ll bet she had me set to pay three times till the walls fell in. Me, I was thinking about moving to get out from under.”

  If he was lying it was a good job; he was as easy as if there were no judgment at stake, no trial, no life.

  The lieutenant tried the methods he had used on Miss Sands.

  “Nine from eighteen leaves nine dollars a week. And you drive a car.”

  Mr. Buffingham waved a weary, careless hand. “Oh, I’ve got a couple little sidelines on. You know, Lieutenant. It ain’t so hard in a drugstore. You can see why I got to. You wouldn’t crack down on me for that, would you?”

  He was doing better than Miss Sands.

  The lieutenant tried another tack.

  “So your boy’s going to try a break, eh?”

  “Huh?”

  “You heard me.”

  “I don’t know what you’re trying to put over on me, but—”

  “Oh yes, you do. That’s how you happened to have that saw.”

  “Saw?”

  “Acting dumb, eh?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” He was alert and easy, increasingly sardonic as he became more sure of his ability to parry the thrusts of his questioner.

  “Wisecracker, huh? Where’d you get that saw?”

  “I ain’t had any saw.”

  “Must have quite a little tool kit. What’d you use on the screws?”

  “I ain’t got no screws to turn.”

  “Oh, so you’re thinking about turning screws. So you were turning screws on that cellar door!”

  “Cellar door? There ain’t any cellar door.”

  It was, undoubtedly, the answer anyone in the house would have made—anyone who was not thinking of the door in my kitchen. Because there was no door at the top of the main cellar stairs. How crafty was Mr. Buffingham? If he were guilty, did he have brains enough to make that subtly innocent answer? I could see the possibilities being weighed in the lieutenant’s mind. Then he veered again.

  “You ever know Rose Liberry, Buffingham?”

  “Who?”

  “You heard me this time, too.”

  “Rose, you said? Liberry? Can’t say I have. Who’s she?”

  “No one. Now.”

  The lieutenant let him go.

  He was thoughtful as Mr. Buffingham hurried out.

  “Why don’t you turn on your psychology now, Mrs. Dacres?”

  “On Mr. Buffingham, you mean?”

  “On Mr. Buffingham. God! What a name!”

  “Well . . .”

  “Is he the type that could have done it?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes, I think he might have done it, psychologically speaking. But why should he? We can’t know for sure about Mrs. Garr, but why should he attack me? I haven’t anything on him.”

  “Sure of that?”

  “Of course I am. I know him less than anyone else in the house.”

  Mr. Kistler stood up to stretch.

  “Yes, he’s sort of past your age.”

  I ignored that, but Lieutenant Strom didn’t.

  “I can see where Kistler here would have greater charms,” he said.

  They both stood grinning at me like a couple of apes.

  “I thought you were intent only in finding out who started me on that long dark journey from which there is almost no returning,” I said witheringly.

  “Reproof received,” the lieutenant returned. He stretched, too
. “Well, Buffingham takes a neat place in the list of suspects, too. He’s crooked. Admits it. His boy is in trouble. Needs dough. Tells a good tale to explain the nine bucks a week, but is it good enough? No connection with Mrs. Garr in the past as far as we know. But he moved in here right after Mrs. Garr took the house—did you get that? His testimony at the inquest said he’d lived here twelve years. Looks like Mrs. Garr might have roped him in the same way she roped in Miss Sands. He pays heavier, too—get that. If she was blackmailing him she had him good.”

  “It might have been for some of his sideline rackets, the ones he admitted,” Mr. Kistler said.

  “Yeah, it might. But I’m not letting that guy out of my mind. Not by a long shot. Come on, you two, I’m hungry. Don’t forget your little job tomorrow, Mrs. Dacres.”

  He waved his cohorts to him, left.

  Mr. Kistler and I were alone. I was dazed after listening to the testimonies, inexpressibly tired.

  “I’m hungry, too,” I said.

  “Oh, the poor baby. She’s tired. She’s hungry. Papa fix the orange juice?” Mr. Kistler went kitchenward to fix my supper. I pined for tomorrow. The doctor said I could have toast, eggs, milk, mashed potatoes, and fruit tomorrow. I intended to have all of that.

  “It’s just like having an operation, and I haven’t even had the operation to talk about,” I moaned over the orange juice.

  “What we’ve got to do is prevent you from being operated on twice.” Mr. Kistler viewed the future. “What the hell are we going to do with you tonight?”

  “I think I’ll manage on my own.”

  “A poor little sick girl doesn’t want extra protection?”

  “I’m not sick.”

  “In that case—”

  “No, thanks. I’ll sleep with the policeman.”

  “You mean you prefer a policeman to me?”

  “Absolutely. I’ll sleep here, the policeman in the chair.”

  “You’d trust the policeman to sleep in the chair?”

  “They should be domesticated by this time.”

  “Trust me to sleep in the chair?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “I’d think you were a nitwit if you did,” he said. “Now, before returning to my labors, I am going out to dine. On steak, medium rare, smothered in onions. New peas. Lettuce with Roquefort dressing. Hot biscuits—”

  I moaned into my pillow, and he went out laughing like a Boucicault villain at the end of the second act.

  * * *

  —

  THE NIGHT PASSED WITHOUT a hitch. I slept, the policeman slept, and all was serene in the morning, except that I was so weak I could hardly get my clothes on. I tiptoed past the policeman; he woke with a jump, which I was glad to see, because what is the use of having a guard if he sleeps through having someone tiptoe past him? He wiped his hand across his face and went out into the hall, so I had a free hand for dressing.

  My clock said six fifteen, which was the earliest I’d been up for years. I managed to get the coffee on, made toast, cooked three eggs. After I’d eaten that I started over on three more eggs.

  It’s wonderful what a little food can do for your spine, your character, and your intelligence. I wondered for a bit if I had overdone things, but my interior settled down after a while. I started putting things back into drawers; I knew I couldn’t make much headway, but I pushed Mrs. Garr’s things back into her closet; I had hung my clothes before going to bed the night before.

  I was out of the house about seven; I didn’t want an argument with Hodge Kistler about going to the Comet office.

  It was one of those what-is-so-rare-as-a-day-in-June days, but I had to take a streetcar; my legs hadn’t solidified enough for a long walk. I picked up a newspaper on the corner before I got on the car. There wasn’t a word in it about me, and I wondered if there had been in yesterday’s paper.

  The Comet building is down on the riverfront, a decrepit hag of a building that holds up mainly, I think, because it is rusted together. It looks rusted; heaven knows what it’s made from, under the crust. The crust on the outside is reddish; the crust on the inside is black and looks, if anything, thicker. I’m fairly familiar with the Comet offices; in pinches, I’d acted as office boy and taken layouts and copy there from Tellier’s.

  The board over the Comet doorway says:

  GILLING CITY COMET

  The Biggest Newspaper of Its Size in the World

  No one much was around at that hour, but I hunted out a lanky, sleepy youngster sweeping papers back and forth in a big room full of tumbledown desks and typewriters. I asked him if he could show me to their archives.

  After long thought he said sure, he didn’t know why not, and led me past hundreds of cubbyholes to a dark inside room.

  Here he switched on a light, looked blankly around at the overflowing files, and left.

  I thought it hopeless trying to figure out where the 1919 files would be. I poked through some huge tomes, full newspaper size, on the open-front shelves that covered the entire back wall of the library, but the rubbed white letters on the back of one volume would say Aug. 17 to Nov. 3, 1924, the one under it Feb. 22 to Apr. 9, 1907, and the one above it Jan. 27 to Mar. 25, 1913.

  A wizened little man came in around eight. He poked around as helplessly as I did, seemingly, but I caught him slipping a picture into a file.

  “How do you do? I’ve been waiting for the librarian,” I explained to him.

  “I’m the librarian,” he admitted sadly, as if he hated to be found out.

  “Lieutenant Strom of the police force suggested I come to you. He’d like to have me go over the papers for May, June, July, and perhaps August of 1919. Would you let me see them?”

  “That’s a lot of papers, miss.”

  “I won’t mind.”

  “It’s probable someone has ’em out.”

  “Someone in the building?”

  “Well, I don’t know. They might be out or they might be here.”

  “Would you tell me where they’d be if they were here?”

  “They’d be there if they aren’t anywhere else.” He waved a gloomy hand at the stacks.

  I gathered it was useless waiting for help from him; I tackled the stacks in earnest myself. My hands were soon as black as a coal deliverer’s; when I shook my skirt after kneeling to look at the bottom shelf the dust flew out in puffs. The librarian stood behind me peering helplessly at the shelves through thick glasses; I wondered if he could even see the white markings.

  Halfway through, I found my volume: May 2 to Jul. 28, 1919.

  I raised a small dust storm by shaking myself and retired with my find to a corner desk, where I leveled off the piles of newspapers it held enough to let the book lie flat. I was elatedly expectant; hunting those stacks and finding what you wanted there was something like coming on a long-sought treasure island in an uncharted sea.

  Beginning with May 2, 1919, I went through the papers item by item. If minutes and hours ticked by, I didn’t know it. But it wasn’t before I reached the Comet for May 24, 1919, that I came on my first news of Rose Liberry. That was a small item on page three. An item so insignificantly placed near the bottom of a column that I almost skipped over it.

  AUNT REPORTS GIRL MISSING OVERNIGHT

  Miss Rachel Staines, 1128 Cleveland Avenue, called police at eleven o’clock yesterday evening to report the unexplained absence of her niece, Miss Rose Liberry, of Cincinnati, who has been visiting Miss Staines for the past week.

  According to Miss Staines, the missing girl left her aunt’s home at approximately three o’clock yesterday afternoon for a little shopping. When the girl did not return for dinner, Miss Staines was not alarmed, as Miss Liberry had said she might call an acquaintance of hers and visit a moving picture theater. When Miss Liberry had not returned by ten o’clock, however, Mis
s Staines became anxious. She waited for some time longer before calling the residence of Miss Liberry’s friend, where it was reported that Miss Liberry had not called and that the friend had been at home the entire evening. Miss Staines then called the police.

  No trace has yet been found of the missing girl.

  It was easy not to miss the account of the mystery on the following day. It was on page one, in the middle of the page.

  GIRL STILL MISSING

  No Trace of Young Visitor

  Yet Unearthed by Police

  The whereabouts of Miss Rose Liberry, who left the home of her aunt, Miss Rachel Staines, at 1128 Cleveland Avenue on the afternoon of May 23, are still a mystery to police and Miss Staines. Miss Staines, alarmed that some harm has come to the girl, has notified the girl’s parents of the continued absence.

  The parents, Mr. and Mrs. J. G. Liberry, of Cincinnati, have telegraphed that they will be in the city this evening to continue the search. No news whatever has come from the missing girl.

  Miss Liberry is reported by her aunt to have left the house at three p.m. . . .

  I skimmed over the rest of it, but it was all repetition of the previous day’s item. I took out my notebook, copied down the two items I’d found so far.

  Lieutenant Strom knew what he was doing when he’d said it would do if I copied down the headlines and first paragraphs.

  On the Comet for May twenty-sixth, the story I sought was plastered all over the front page. It held first place, with a page headline, the right-hand column—and a picture.

  I looked at that picture a long time.

  I looked at the picture and thought with anger that the girl was dead.

  She was lovely. She was lovely in the way that pulls the heartstrings most: a child, and so grave. She was sixteen perhaps; she wore a dark taffeta dress with georgette sleeves; a fashion I could just recall, the fashion of 1919. Her hair was dark, brushed simply back from her face; the widely spaced dark eyes looked levelly from the picture into yours, inquiring, holding back a smile of friendliness. It was the mouth I liked best, the lips held so seriously, so wonderingly, so consideringly.