Staircase 4

by Helen Reilly

  “Then you’ll stand on your statement, Mr. Evans?” McKee asked, and when Evans said, “I will,” the Scotsman threw his bombshell.

  He did it quietly. He closed the red-leather notebook with precision, slid it into his pocket, and turned to Claire. “That box you threw aside as you left your bedroom and came in here a few minutes ago—will you get it, Miss Middleton, or shall I?”

  Pure panic. Claire sprang to her feet with a thrusting, defenseless movement. She was shaking. Her lips parted. No words came out.

  It was Joanna who spoke. She looked tired, sighed, said composedly, “Sit down, Claire, dear,” and to McKee, “A foolish error, Inspector, a mistake. Nothing more. Mark had promised her, you see—and it was close to her birthday and quite naturally she thought—Just a minute.” Joanna was proceeding toward the bedroom as she talked. She went in, came out again, handed a slim green-leather case to McKee. He sprang the lid on a string of pearls glowing softly on their satin bed.

  Gabrielle looked hard at the pearls. The lost found; as far as she could tell they were the pearls Mark had shown her in the Devon on the day he died, that he had bought for a wedding present.

  McKee examined the necklace carefully. It corresponded with the jeweler’s description—and Gabrielle’s initials, or the initials that would have been hers, GM, were on the lid. “Yours, Miss Conant,” he said, and extended the box.

  Gabrielle made no motion.

  “Take them.” Joanna’s voice was a rasp. “Now that we know they’re yours, we don’t want them.”

  Gabrielle took the box without a word, dropped it into her bag. McKee turned to Claire. “Where and when did the pearls come into your possession, Miss Middleton?”

  Claire was a lifeless mannequin, holding confusion and humiliation and, yes, disappointment, tightly in check.

  She said tonelessly, “They were in the drawer of Mark’s desk in his apartment. I found them when I went there to get some things for Mother last week.”

  McKee shook his head. “I’m afraid not, Miss Middleton. I was talking to Mr. Bond this morning. Not only the desk but the entire apartment was gone over immediately after Mr. Middleton’s death and the pearls were not there. The last time they were seen they were in your uncle’s possession—which was on the afternoon of the day he died.”

  Chapter Sixteen: The long finger of suspicion

  GABRIELLE RATIOCINATED STUPIDLY. The pearls in Mark’s possession when he died… They were gone afterward… Claire had them… Was it Claire who had fled from the apartment, running through the door, the hinge of which had creaked, after the shot that killed Mark was fired?

  If she was guilty she didn’t look it. She looked young and innocent and proud and stricken; she stuck to her story with passion. She said the pearls were in the drawer. “The desk drawer where Uncle Mark kept things he valued. I went to it. I wanted his crop with the silver mounting, I didn’t think anyone would care. He taught me to ride… I saw the box. Mother had told me that Mark had bought the pearls. It was near my birthday. He always said he’d give me a string. The initials on the box were mine.”

  Joanna had risen. She looked old and sick. She said with perfect composure, “Don’t worry, dearest, it was a mistake. Inspector McKee, my daughter came back here with the pearls last Wednesday afternoon. She was perfectly frank, didn’t try to conceal them. I told her that she was mistaken, that they weren’t for her, that the initials were GM, not CM.” She appealed to him with a gesture, suddenly throwing herself on his mercy.

  The Scotsman gazed from mother to daughter thoughtfully. It was on Wednesday afternoon that Gabrielle Conant had been thrust into the foyer closet in Mark Middleton’s apartment. Was Claire the thrustee? He asked her, and got an icy “No. No, I didn’t. There was no one there when I went in, no one!”

  He returned his attention to Joanna, “And you yourself, Mrs. Middleton? You took the pearls back to the apartment, I presume, meaning to return them to the desk, and the presence of Miss Conant and Mr. Amory Stopped you.” Joanna nodded grayly. Evans had an arm around Claire. Her face was against his shoulder and he was smoothing her hair. Her shaking had stopped. She was listening.

  “And then, Mrs. Middleton?”

  Joanna sat down tiredly. “I brought them back here with me. The more I thought of it the more I began to think that perhaps I was mistaken, that the initials might be CM, not GM—that Mark had bought the pearls for Claire, after all. I met him at the jeweler’s that morning, we always go there, and I was taking my watch to be repaired, and he showed me the pearls on the way out. He didn’t say they were for—Miss Conant. He just said, ‘Pretty, aren’t they?’ and put them in his pocket. And then, there was something else.” She smoothed a sleeve. “Mark was very generous, very. It occurred to me that his wedding gift to Miss Conant would have been more—more magnificent. The pearls are good, as they go, but the string is rather small.”

  Joanna Middleton had said all she intended to say. McKee thanked her pleasantly. Always leave them smiling when you say good-by. He was not ill-satisfied. Neither Joanna nor Claire—nor Blake Evans—had an alibi for the time of Mark Middleton’s death. All three had both motive and opportunity. In addition, Glass’s murder had provoked a direct lie from Blake Evans as to his whereabouts the evening before. Wherever Evans had been, he wasn’t in his office working late. And then there were the pearls—very much the pearls.

  His good-morning was general. Joanna responded with a stiff nod. Over Claire’s bent head Evans sent a long glance to Gabrielle. The glance said: She’s only a child—and Joanna can’t help herself. Don’t be too hard on them.

  The Inspector was holding the door. Gabrielle went through it with a sense of escape. Claire’s jealous dislike, Joanna’s hatred, her malevolence, had been queerly shocking. You didn’t expect people to hate you like that when you had done nothing to deserve it. Traversing the lobby downstairs McKee spoke of the pearls. He said that either Claire’s story was true or it wasn’t. Granting that it was true, it was presumably the murderer who had returned the pearls to Mark’s apartment after his death had been pronounced murder instead of suicide. Gabrielle asked why. “Because,” McKee said, “when the case was reopened they would have been too hot to handle.”

  He wanted to know about keys. Gabrielle said there were four. Philip Bond had two, one of which he had loaned to Tyrell. Joanna had one and she had one.

  McKee did a little mental arithmetic, not aloud. It was beginning to narrow down. A certain number of people, and only a certain number, could have had access to Middleton’s desk. Just as only a certain number of people could have lured Gabrielle to the Jordon’s, entered her rooms at will, planted the bills, and set the fire. Outside, sleet was still coming down. The day was dark, forbidding. He put Gabrielle into a cab, went back to the office, and found an interesting report waiting for him on the missing Miss Nelson.

  The report had come deviously, via a janitor, the local precinct, and Headquarters. Glass’s office had been broken into the night before. At around 8:30 p.m. a man had called a dentist who occupied space two floors above in the same building to report that a burglary was in progress in Room 416. The dentist, a friend, and the night watchman had promptly investigated. They had found Glass’s door unlocked and his office in wild disorder. The desk had been ransacked, the drawers of a filing-cabinet in which he kept records of his cases were pulled out, and papers littered the floor. The thief was gone, but hearing a noise in a transverse corridor that sounded suspicious, the three men gave chase. They hadn’t caught up with their quarry. They had caught a glimpse of a flying woman at the foot of a staircase, a woman in a brown coat with a hood over her head who answered Miss Nelson’s general description.

  McKee used the telephone half a dozen times and sat back, frowning. On the face of it, it was simple enough. Miss Nelson had killed Glass, taken his keys, and gone to his office to collect material incriminating her. But, the Scotsman thought, if he was right, if Glass had been wiped out because he w
as putting the finger on the man or woman who had planted the bills on Gabrielle Conant—Miss Nelson couldn’t have done that. She was at work at the time, he had checked with her employers. Moreover, the “Bert” of the photograph that had vanished with her, was not in New York, according to Miss Nelson’s friend Mabel Tash. Mabel Tash was very positive. “Bert went away somewhere. Florence was planning to join him, she missed him a lot.” When had Bert gone away? He had gone away in August.

  It was in August that Mark Middleton had been killed. And the Bert who had gone away had “kind of a round face—plump—with glasses.”

  Gabrielle Conant’s round man? It could be. The Scotsman brought the front legs of the chair in which he had been teetering to the floor, pressed his buzzer, and went to work.

  Gabrielle, meanwhile, was being steadily maneuvered into the last position in the world McKee wished her to occupy. When she got home she found her cousin Susan and Susan’s husband, Tony Van Ness, waiting for her. They had come into town to go to a cocktail party and exhibition at the Solcoldt gallery. Susan looked well, but there was a suggestion of tightness, strain, under her lively chatter. Tony again? Gabrielle wondered. His imperturbable and radish front was much as usual. It would be; it always was, up to the moment he was confronted with his sins, when he became a small boy pushed into a corner, alternately indignant and contrite.

  They both professed anxiety about her, asked whether there had been any new developments, and were horrified when they heard of the death the night before of the private detective Joanna Middleton had hired to watch her. “A private detective watching you!” Susan exclaimed. “That dreadful woman! How could she, how dared she!” Tony applied a more forceful epithet to Joanna.

  Not even to Susan could Gabrielle tell the whole story. She kept her own counsel as she had all along. Tony pressed for details. Where had Glass been bumped off? Why? Who was Miss Nelson? Alice and Tyrell arrived in the middle of it. It was Tyrell’s day off and they had come to take Gabrielle to lunch at a new place Alice had discovered. They too were outraged. More cries, exclamations, questions—Gabrielle’s discomfort grew. To remain silent as to what had happened the night before with the police was one thing, to do so with her cousin, her friends, was another. The time element saved her from getting in too deep. The contingency for which John had prepared abruptly arose.

  There was a clamorous ring at the front door and the District Attorney entered the apartment accompanied by three other men. The men remained in the hall. Dwyer brushed unceremoniously past Tyrell, who had admitted him, and walked into the living-room. He ignored the others, stood still just over the threshold, and looked at Gabrielle, slender and relaxed in a chair near one of the windows. He said in a hard voice, without preface or apology, “Miss Conant, what do you know about an Edward P. Glass who was killed last night in the apartment of a Miss Nelson on East Twelfth Street?” and watched her closely.

  She remained cool, unflurried. Her eyes steady on his, she said, “I know nothing you don’t know—simply that Mr. Glass was a private detective employed by Mrs. Middleton to watch me, and that he was killed.”

  “That’s all you know?” Dwyer smiled unpleasantly.

  “Come, Miss Conant, this isn’t going to do you any good.” He dropped wheedling, became harsh. “Who is Miss Nelson—and where is she now?”

  Gabrielle bore the onslaught unflinchingly. “To both questions—I haven’t the slightest idea.”

  The blond stocky District Attorney looked as though his skin had grown too tight for him. He swelled visibly. Glancing over his shoulder, he gestured to someone in the hall, and a man walked through the doorway, an enormous man, clean and combed, in a badly fitting overcoat that was too small for him. It was the superintendent of Miss Nelson’s apartment building. His name was Alden. Dwyer said to him, “Mr. Alden, I want you to look around this room for the young woman who paid Miss Nelson a visit at around five o’clock yesterday afternoon under the pretense of wanting to sublet her apartment. Do you see the young woman? Is she here?”

  The superintendent nodded. He raised a hand like a small roast of pork and pointed at Gabrielle. “Yes, sir. That’s her, sir—over there in the corner.”

  A truck went past in the street. A radiator hissed. The clock ticked. No one spoke. Alice and Tyrell, Susan and Tony, sat still, bewitched, under a spell. Dwyer took over. His truculence had subsided. He was as smooth as butter. He dismissed the superintendent with a wave, returned his regard to Gabrielle. “And now, Miss Conant, your whereabouts last night at between seven and—say, nine o’clock?”

  Gabrielle let the pause lengthen. If only John Muir were there to support her. He had said he would come today as early as he could. Footsteps along the hall; John was there, just inside the door, tall and commanding and calm, his gaze lazy, interrogative. It wasn’t John who answered the District Attorney, it was Brenda Holmes. Brenda had come in with John, stood beside him, as beautiful as a dream in a gray squirrel coat with a gray squirrel cap on her fair hair. Looking at Dwyer directly, she said in her soft full voice, “I heard your question just now. I can answer it. I can tell you where Miss Conant was last night between seven and nine. She and Mr. Muir were with me in my apartment on Washington Square West.”

  The tension in the room gave way crashingly. A long-drawn breath from Susan, a small clap of triumph from Alice, faces relaxed, postures were shifted. Tony Van Ness grunted scornfully at the District Attorney, Tyrell sat back and lit a cigarette.

  “I don’t believe it,” Dwyer said in what was almost a shout. He was flabbergasted, outraged. He had come there prepared for the kill and his prey was being snatched from him. It was not to be borne. He had to bear it. Brenda’s statement was explicit. Listening to her make it, Gabrielle relived those hours last night, hours of confusion and pain. After she and John had made their escape from Glass’s office by a narrow margin, John had called Brenda and they had gone to her apartment, taking care not to be seen going in, a simple matter as the building was small and the elevator a self-service one.

  The alibi John wanted from Brenda was not quite so simple. Between them they had managed it. Brenda had had cocktails with John in his apartment at around six o’clock. They had intended to dine together but Gabrielle’s call had taken John away and Brenda had gone home, getting there at a little before seven. Her elderly cousin, Lucy Morrow, with whom she lived, was in bed with one of her headaches and Brenda had been in and out of the room doing various small things for her. The question was whether Lucy Morrow would know whether or not Brenda had friends with her in the living-room from seven o’clock on. After consideration Brenda thought the deception could be managed, with a little manipulation. The manipulating had been done.

  The faith she had in John, the way, after a startled and concerned glance at his face, the cut on his temple, she had agreed to what he asked of her, without explanation, made Gabrielle ashamed. She wouldn’t have been so complaisant with anyone. But Brenda was very much in love and she was one of those women made for love, content to surrender her will to the man’s, to sink her identity in his, secure in the conviction that whatever he did was right.

  Everything she was saying in answer to Dwyer’s barrage was the truth, except the time element. They had arrived at her apartment at close to nine instead of at around seven. They had had sandwiches and coffee, they had looked in for a moment on Lucy Morrow before leaving and John had said to the old lady, “I hope we didn’t disturb you when we trooped in here on Brenda’s heels a couple of hours ago. We tried to be quiet.”

  At the end of it Dwyer demanded corroboration—and Brenda offered him her cousin, Miss Morrow, quietly, gold-brown brows delicate semicircles on her white forehead. The District Attorney would check, of course, but Gabrielle saw that he believed Brenda, however unwillingly. He retreated. He wasn’t yet through with her; he hammered at her about her visit to Miss Nelson during the late afternoon. Here, however, Gabrielle was on firm ground. She told him the story as it had occurred u
p to the time when she had entered Miss Nelson’s apartment, told him about seeing the round man’s photograph.

  “And after that, Miss Conant, what did you do?”

  Gabrielle shrugged. “What could I do, then and there? I didn’t want to frighten Miss Nelson, make her suspicious. She said she wasn’t sure she wanted to sublet but that if she did she would let me know. So I left. When I got home Mr. Muir was waiting for me outside my apartment with an invitation from Miss Holmes…” The rest of the evening was accounted for.

  Dwyer was openly incredulous. “I’ll change the shape of my question. You searched for the car in which your so-called round man left the Devon, for three days. You found it, found the woman who drove it—and did nothing. What did you intend to do, Miss Conant?”

  Gabrielle said crisply, “I intended to get advice from my lawyer, Mr. Bond.”

  “You didn’t mention your visit to Miss Nelson to the Inspector when you were with him this morning?”

  Gabrielle shrugged. “No, I didn’t mention it. As far as Mr. Glass’s death was concerned I had no information whatever. And to tell you the truth, Mr. Dwyer”—she smiled at him amiably—“my encounters with you, with the police, have not been pleasant enough to make me attempt new ones.”

  Dwyer refused to let go. “Mr. Muir knew of your visit to Miss Nelson?”

  Gabrielle said mendaciously, “Yes, but I don’t think he took it too seriously.”

  John nodded. He said soberly, “I didn’t last night, but when I saw the paper today… That’s why I came, Gabrielle. I thought you really ought to go to Inspector McKee.”