by Alan Handley
There might be one chance, at least for Maggie, if I didn’t louse it up like I had everything else. He hadn’t killed us so far. He was waiting for something. Maybe for Maggie to come around so she would know when he killed us. It would be more fun that way—if he did wait…. Oh, Maggie darling, open your eyes. Please, dear God, make Maggie open her eyes…then maybe I could rush him so he’d get me, but maybe I could tangle him up enough so she could get away…. You can keep moving for a few seconds with slugs in you, with luck I could…Oh, Maggie, open your eyes…Maggie…Maggie…
He was still standing there, smiling.
“What are you going to do to us?” Keep him talking…say something…say anything till Maggie comes to…Maggie…Maggie…Please…
“What do you think, Timmy?”
“But Maggie doesn’t know anything about this. Let her go. She doesn’t understand what the whole thing is about. Anyway, it was all an accident. Nellie died accidentally. The police said so…the papers…”
“But it wasn’t an accident, Timmy. I had it all planned. I meant to kill her.”
“But why? What did she ever do to you?” Maggie’s head was rocking back and forth. How long, oh Lord, how long?
“She wasn’t a nice person, Timmy. Not at all. Much better dead. She got greedy. Oh, I didn’t mind a little money now and then for buying my clothes and arranging my social engagements.” There was a shorter and uglier way of saying that. “But she kept wanting more money all the time. Lots more, and when I wouldn’t give her more she started threatening me. She said she could have me put in prison for draft evasion,” he simpered. “That and other things. Now I couldn’t have that, could I? You see my point, don’t you, Timmy? As soon as someone knows something about you that you don’t want other people to know and they start getting greedy, the only thing to do is get rid of them. And you know something about me now that I don’t want other people, strangers that is, to know. So, you see, there’s nothing else for me to do. You do understand, don’t you, Timmy, dear?” He was loving this. Telling me how clever he’d been…almost squirming with delight. Maggie, for God’s sake wake up. He was moving slowly toward us now. “I should have thought that after old Kendall suffered a, shall we say, unfortunate accident you would have had sense enough to stop bothering me….
“Accident…?”
“I didn’t mean to kill him, really…just impair his vision slightly…. But it was just as well, because he would probably have tried to blackmail me, too, just like Nellie, and just like you if I let you go…. I thought he was too drunk, the old sot, but he’d recognized me at the funeral when you introduced us, and he found me in your room that night I went to get Nellie’s engagement book. Really, what a disgusting place you live in. Surely with your looks you could have done better than that.” I felt as though I were listening to a case history in one of those medical books, the kind they have to describe in Latin.
Maggie groaned. “Ah, at last. It looks like the beautiful Maggie is joining us. I didn’t mean to hit her, but she got annoying and I had to…before she’d give up that page. Most unladylike.” He could even laugh at this.
Maggie opened her eyes. She gasped when she saw me bending over her.
“Oh, Timmy darling. I thought you’d never get here. It was that woman, Margo. You didn’t tell me it would be a woman.”
“It isn’t.” I indicated the dark figure standing across from us. “It’s our old friend Bobby LeBranch.” She stared at him.
“But…but…”
“Quite convincing, too, wasn’t I, Maggie? If I do say so myself.” The purring voice started to take on an edge. “Shall we go into the bedroom now, if you don’t mind? So much more touching, I think, and such lovely pictures for the tabloids. Publicity is so important, don’t you agree?” We didn’t move. His voice became a rasp. “Get in there.”
“Oh, Timmy,” said Maggie, “what’s he going to do?”
“Don’t worry. It’ll be all right.”
“Really very simple, Maggie dear.” The purr was back again. “Crime passionel, I believe it’s called. A psychoneurotic veteran and beautiful showgirl, that’s what you’ll be called, you know. Both discovered locked in each other’s arms like Paolo and Francesca. Even death won’t part you.” He moved toward us. “Now get going.”
I helped Maggie to her feet. Going through the door into the bedroom I might be able to throw her to one side and make a dive for him.
“Sorry you won’t be able to make the opening night of your little play, but then we can’t have everything, can we? Perhaps I’ll get the understudy job. Thank you so much, Tim. And now that you two will be unavailable maybe I’ll get to play a part, but which shall I do, yours, Maggie, or yours, Tim? That’s really quite a problem.” We backed toward the bedroom door. I moved a bit so Maggie would go first, but he had anticipated that.
“No dear, let the gentleman go first. And, Timmy, be sure to stand by the bed in plain sight. I do want to make it as nearly simultaneous as possible.”
“You can’t get away with this, LeBranch.”
“Oh, I think so. Who’s to tell? Not you, nor Maggie. Certainly not Nellie or Kendall. Who, then? Libby?” He came nearer. “Ted? You didn’t suspect, so why should they? Which reminds me.” He reached into the pocket of his coat and pulled out a crumpled five-dollar bill and tossed it to me. I didn’t try to catch it. It fell to the floor and stayed there. “I really insist on paying for my ticket after all.”
“The police will be here any minute,” said Maggie.
“Together with the U. S. Marines, no doubt. No, Maggie dear, I’m sure we won’t be disturbed.”
Maggie and I had backed up until we were stopped by the bed. He reached over and snapped on the bedside radio. He had planned this scene very thoroughly. We waited forever until the radio warmed up and music blared out. He raised his voice.
“So helpful, don’t you think, for covering the sound of shots.” He was panting with excitement. “Really, radio is a wonderful invention. What a shame they aren’t playing the Liebestod. Now then, if you two will just get on the bed. You know, I really feel quite like Petronius Arbiter. What a pity we haven’t time to explore the possibilities of this piquant scene more fully. However, there isn’t much time.”
Maggie looked at me, I nodded and she got on the bed. There wasn’t anything else for me to do but try to rush him. Maggie would have sense enough to run…at least I hoped she would.
“I think it would be most unwise of you to be heroic at this point, Timmy dear.” He had to shout over the radio. “I shall get you both no matter what and it will just be unnecessarily messy. Now don’t be difficult, Pet, I want to arrange you nice and pretty…at least as good a job as I did on Nellie. Still I’m afraid it would be impossible to make this look like an accident. However, I promise when they find you, you will go down in history as the romance of the ages.”
This was the time. That miracle hadn’t happened. Now or never. I got ready to jump. Well, I thought to myself, here goes nothing….
“Robert, put down that gun.” It was a shout from the doorway. LeBranch quickly glanced over his shoulder. Backed by the superintendent, Mr. Frobisher was standing in the doorway. He had a gun in his hand and it was pointed at Le Branch.
“Go away. It’s too late,” yelled LeBranch. “Go away.” He took one step nearer us. “Get on that bed,” he shouted at me. His voice broke into a scream. “Get on that bed!” I didn’t move.
“Robert. Put down that gun. We can work this out some way.”
“It’s too late for that.” His fingers whitened at the knuckles. The pistol snout was pointed at my head. Frobisher moved toward us.
“Robert!”
I sprang at him.
The two explosions came almost together. A blinding flash…a force like a kick in the face…then blackness. That’s all I remember.
It was quiet when I opened my eyes. Water was dripping on my face. A sharp ache seemed to be bursting my skull. I stru
ggled to sit up. There were lights on. More blew up in my head.
“Lie still,” said Maggie softly. “Lie still. You’ll be all right, darling.”
“But where is he? What happened?” She looked past me toward the floor. I rolled over on my side and squinted over the edge of the bed.
I had seen it before. In England, in France, in Germany, huddled figures holding their dead in their arms, rocking back and forth in stunned agony, crooning a wordless song…comforting a body past comfort.
Mr. Frobisher raised his head and looked at us. Tears were streaming from his browless eyes. His face was gray as death. Mechanically he was stroking the head he held in his lap. The ridiculous fur hat had fallen to one side and with it the black wig. The white face, the glistening, bloody mouth, contrasted grotesquely with the short brown hair. A frightening caricature of the face in the photograph on Frobisher’s desk.
“He’s dead,” said Mr. Frobisher dazedly. “I killed him. I killed him.”
“Bobby was Mr. Frobisher’s son,” Maggie whispered softly.
Mr. Frobisher heard her and his head snapped up.
“My son?” His tear-filled eyes hardened. “My son died in the war.” He looked down at the body in his arms. “This is not my son. My son died in Normandy. Do you understand? He was killed in the war…not like this…. My son died in the war….”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
THE NEXT TWENTY-FOUR hours were just a blur of faces punctuated by exploding flashbulbs. Doctors’ faces, policemen, detectives, city officials, Frobisher, Jo-Jo the rubber, Peters, Libby, Lieutenant Heffran…and they had even rounded up the basket man, the two soldiers and my Samaritan couple. I must have had my picture taken a hundred times, but a hell of a lot of good it did me now with my head all bandaged up like the Invisible Man’s.
Oh yes, now I was the little hero. But what did I have to show for it? No job. My best suit covered with blood they’d probably never be able to get out—and a scar on my temple. How bad that was I wouldn’t know till I could take off the bandage.
Well, Sunday’s Times had better have a nice long help-wanted column. I might as well start getting my name down on lists. I hoped I hadn’t completely forgotten how to work a bulldozer.
And as if that wasn’t enough, Maggie up and announces she’s flying to Mexico immediately.
Fine thing! That was gratitude for you. If it hadn’t been for me she wouldn’t be alive today. But no…off she’s going into the wild blue yonder.
I was going to tell her what I thought of her walking out on me when I needed her most and I would have, too, only I realized that when you came right down to it, if it hadn’t been for me she wouldn’t even have that bump on the back of her head, much less almost have been shot. Knowing that didn’t make me feel any better, either.
But the final straw was when she even had the nerve to ask me over to help her pack.
I was sitting on the bed in her bedroom morosely watching her stuff things into grips. From time to time she would make me get up and sit on a grip that took all my hundred and eighty pounds to force shut.
“For Heaven’s sake, Timmy, stop looking so disapproving and get us a drink. You promised me a belt from the office bottle, remember.” I got the drinks and gave her hers and sat down on the bed again with mine.
“You are aware, I suppose,” I said as nastily as I could, “that they have a limit on the amount of luggage a passenger is permitted to carry.”
“Yes, dear. Quite aware. And do stop sulking. I know perfectly well you’re furious because that bandage isn’t photogenic, and you didn’t get booked for a week of vaudeville.”
“There’s no need to be offensive.”
“Well, is it my fault nobody gave you your little chance in front of a crackling fire to tidy up all the loose ends?” I didn’t even deign to reply. “That is what’s eating you, isn’t it?”
“Partly,” I admitted.
“Well, go on then.”
“Of course, if you’re not interested…”
“Oh, darling, I’m ecstatically interested, but I’ve got to finish packing. The plane leaves in an hour. Can’t I listen while I pack? Do I have to sit openmouthed at your feet? Personally I think we were both dopes not to have figured out Bobby was a woman all along. I mean, there was the Pyramus and Thisbe reference in Kendall’s letter…Thisbe was a man dressed as a woman. And you told me Libby said Vince Wagner had wanted Margo for Rosalind in As You Like It the moment she walked into rehearsal of that Equity library play thing…impersonation again and then lying about it to us in “21,” and saying it was for Nora in A Doll’s House. You were pretty stupid not to have caught on right away.”
“Now wait a minute. Who’s telling this story? You or me?” This wasn’t at all the way I had planned it.
“But it’s all so obvious. Nellie knew Bobby was Frobisher’s son way back in Front Page Stuff when Bobby was a dancer in it and Frobisher was the stage manager. Frobisher wanted to keep an eye on him and sort of protect him from himself, and he even made Bobby take another name just for appearances. But in spite of everything Bobby started getting into scrapes, and instead of letting him eventually end up in prison, Frobisher thought he’d feel more at home in Hollywood where he could find a congenial little clique. All in all he had a fine time with his father paying him to keep out of his life and getting jobs dancing in movies to keep him amused.”
“What a pity he didn’t stay in Hollywood. He’d probably be a Goldwyn Girl by now. Where did you find out all this?”
“Oh, Bill told me,” said Maggie.
“And who, may I ask, is Bill?”
“Bill Heffran. You know, Lieutenant Heffran.”
“Oh, so now it’s Bill, is it?”
“Well, darling, I had to talk to someone while you were so busy hogging the cameras.” She had found another pair of shoes in the bottom of her closet, which necessitated opening a grip and trying to close it again. Even both of us jumping on it wasn’t enough so she said to hell with it and threw them under the bed.
“What else did dear Bill tell you while you were getting so chummy?”
“Well, let’s see, Bobby came back to New York when the war started to keep out of the draft because he dressed more or less like a man out there. Here, he always passed as a woman.”
“Except, of course, when he was killing people.”
“Oh, that’s what Bill calls a ‘double bluff’ because Bobby was at heart a transvestite, whatever that means. I forgot to ask Bill….”
“I can see how you would be busy with other things.”
“Don’t be petty. Anyhow, Bobby had been helling around town always as a woman and appearing as a man was a disguise because it wasn’t what he was most of the time, which was what he wasn’t…Oh nuts, you know what I mean.”
“Too bad the army didn’t catch up with him then…with his pants on.”
“You know, Frobisher’s the one I can’t help feeling a little sorry for. Imagine being so disgusted and ashamed of your own son that you told everyone he had been killed in the war rather than admit he was your son.”
“Did Bill also tell you how much of all this Frobisher knew?”
“Oh, Bobby kept his father posted on everything, even boasted about it. He had him over a barrel because Frobisher had also been paying Nellie blackmail. But to give the devil his due, I do think he would have confessed or made Bobby confess if the police hadn’t so obligingly announced that Nellie died of heart failure. Of course, Bill knew all along that it wasn’t an accident.”
“Oh he did, did he?”
“Yes, they could tell at the autopsy the way the spindle went in or something. They let it get in the papers that it was an accident to lull the murderer into a false sense of security, he says. He says that if you’d told him all the truth at the very beginning you could have saved yourself a lot of unpleasantness.”
“That’s damn sweet of Bill, I must say. I suppose he’ll get promoted now?”
�
�As a matter of fact I think he already has been.”
“Bully for him, the big slob. Did he tell you how Bobby knew I had the Youth and Beauty Book in the first place?”
“Oh, yes, Frobisher told Bobby. He guessed from the way you shot your mouth off in Sardi’s. And he figured that if he and Bobby could get that and destroy it, what with the murder being called an accident, they’d be safe. That’s the only reason he cast us in the show. To keep an eye on us and find out how much we knew. Really, when I think of how you forced that understudy business on Bobby when he only came around to the theater to see how you were making out after he and Jo-Jo bungled killing you the night before. No wonder Frobisher wouldn’t speak to him. Really, you were an ass.”
“That understudy was Libby’s idea, not mine. But ass or not, young lady, you’re still alive.” I didn’t mean to say that. It was unfair, but I was getting mad.
“Oh, Timmy.” She dropped the clothes she was holding and ran over to the bed and threw her arms around me. “Don’t think I’m not terribly grateful and you were ever so brave. Honestly you were. But you’ll have to admit you were a damn fool all the same.”
I had to admit that.
“Well, I guess I certainly tidied up all the loose ends all right, all right,” she said. “And don’t be unhappy. Bill said that for an actor you had an awful lot of nerve, but please next time you find a corpse just pick up the phone and dial 0. It will save a lot of trouble all the way around.”