Time to Die

by Hilda Lawrence

  “That ain’t no owl. It’s been moving from place to place, too fast.” Amos looked over his shoulder. “First it was over by the parking lot, then it was under the hotel porch, and now it’s—it’s out there.” He pointed to a thicket of trees straight ahead. “You got a flashlight?”

  “No. You’re working yourself up. It’s an owl all right. Wait a minute and he’ll sound off again.”

  They waited but there was nothing more to hear, nothing but the timeless wind in the treetops and the small, disturbing rustle of a summer night.

  “It always gets cold,” Amos whispered. “I don’t know why, but it always gets cold.”

  Perley coughed quietly behind his hand. It was cold; he could feel it in his mind. “I can’t go out there,” he said. “Mark said no matter what I wasn’t to go out. . . . What do you think?”

  “I think some devilment’s up. Somebody trying to act funny. I’ll show ’em. Lend me your gun.”

  Perley put his hands on the window ledge. “I don’t think I ought to,” he said. “You may get tempted to use it and hurt somebody. Still—”

  Amos saw him recoil and watched his hands grope frantically along the sill. He saw him stoop to the floor.

  “Gone?” Amos asked in a thin, high voice.

  “Gone.” Perley switched on a lamp. “Come on inside.”

  They looked inside and out, hopelessly. When they saw that further search was useless they went out to the porch. The stars were paling and the wind had gone. Far down the road an owl called faintly. It sounded as if it were mocking.

  The phone rang beside Mark’s bed at six-thirty. It was the house operator.

  “Wake up,” she said. “And no fooling. I did what you told me to. I’ve got the president of the Turf Club on the line and is he burned up. He says it better be important.”

  “It is. Put him through.” He waited until a surly voice said, “What’s the idea?”

  Mark told him. He said he wanted to know, as soon as possible, everything on and off the record about Miss Cora Sheffield of The Cloisters, Lexington, Kentucky. He said it was urgent.

  “Never heard of her,” the president said.

  Mark continued. “Police business,” he said.

  The other voice changed. “She didn’t do it,” the president said softly.

  “Do what?”

  “Whatever it is. Cora’s been accused of every sin in the decalogue and to my personal knowledge she hasn’t committed one. Well, maybe one, but who cares? Who are you?”

  Mark explained.

  “Murder! That’s wonderful!” The president abandoned his r’s and rushed in with a replacement of h’s. “Murder! Come to breakfast. I’ve got a ham that melts in your mouth.”

  “There’s nothing I’d like better,” Mark said, struggling to keep his own consonants in line, “but I’ve got a full day ahead. I take it,” he added, “that you don’t mind swearing to Miss Sheffield’s innocence?”

  The presidential oaths rang pontifically.

  “Thank you. Now what about a friend of hers named Kirby? Henry Kirby.”

  This brought a purely gratuitous repetition of the same language, but against, not for. It subsided gradually. “Hank is no friend,” the president finally admitted. “He’s a fifth or sixth cousin of Cora’s and nothing like that ever happened to the family before. Namby-pamby, mush and water, milk-drinking, backsliding nincompoop. She’ll have to marry him one of these days out of plain shame and embarrassment. You can’t let a man like that run loose. But,” he added regretfully, “he’s no killer.”

  Mark thanked him and hung up. The house operator rang him again and warned him not to go back to bed. “You told me to do that,” she reminded him. “Now go in the bathroom and turn on the water so I can hear it.”

  He did. He bathed, shaved, dressed, and went out to breakfast. The sky was lowering, and a sticky fog blew in from the river. He thought of Perley on his mountain top, but without envy. After breakfast he went to the Yale Club.

  The mannerly custodian had spent fifteen years behind that desk and they had given him the shell of a turtle. He stood firm against persuasion and threats. He snobbishly admitted that Mr. Kirby was a very well-known gentleman, related to the equally well-known Miss Sheffield, and that all mail and communications would be forwarded. Mark gave up.

  He checked Cora and Kirby in his book and took a cab to Beacham’s house. This was a four-story brownstone, with basement, and it was boarded up. He rang the front bell and pounded on the basement door. After a few minutes the door opened. An elderly man of clerical aspect looked him over. Cassie’s new caretaker. “Haven’t you made a mistake, sir?” he asked politely. “The family’s away.” It was a tribute to Mark’s gray flannels.

  “No,” Mark said. He gave the man his card. “I’ve come down from Mr. Beacham’s cottage in the mountains. I’m investigating Miss Cassidy’s death.”

  The man opened the door wider. “Come in,” he said. “I read about that in the papers. And Mr. Beacham was kind enough to inform me also.” He led the way down a dark passage lined with closed doors, to a small sitting room opening off the kitchen. It was immaculately clean and looked out on a neat flagstoned yard. “I can offer you coffee, sir.”

  Mark took it gratefully. It was easier to talk when you could swallow between questions. “What is your name?” he asked.

  “Albert Shaw.” The man looked surprised. He hesitated before he went on. “I hope I’m not making a mistake, sir. I asked you in because I trusted your identification of yourself. Mr. Beacham was very emphatic about reporters.”

  “I’m myself, all right,” Mark assured him. “Now, how well did you know Miss Cassidy?”

  “I didn’t know Miss Cassidy,” Shaw answered. He looked at Mark’s card again. “No, Mr. East, I didn’t rightly know her. I saw the lady when she came to the agency where I am registered, and we talked for a bit, but I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything of value.” He looked apologetic. He was a prim little man with an unworldly air, not the caretaker type as it is usually cast. He should have been an old retainer, kept on out of affection and allowed to carry in the extra hot water for tea.

  “How did she impress you?” Mark asked.

  The answer was given with a deprecating look that acknowledged its meagerness. “Not as a lady who would die a violent death. She was—colorless, you might say. Very kind in her manner and soft in her speech, but when she left a room you didn’t remember she’d been in it.”

  Mark took a leisurely swallow. “Did you know the man who preceded you?”

  “No, sir. I don’t even know his name. Mr. Beacham told me—I met Mr. Beacham only once, when I first came—Mr. Beacham told me he drank. And not his own liquor, either. Mr. Beacham’s.” He smiled gently.

  “Did he come from your agency?”

  “No, sir. I understand he was someone Miss Cassidy was sorry for, someone not registered anywhere. That’s not always wise, feeling sorry for people to the extent of taking them into your own home.”

  Mark put his cup on the small, clean table. “If you were in my place, would you try to find this other man? Do you think he might know something?”

  “I couldn’t say. I wish I could help you, but I’m afraid there’s nothing I can say. You see, I don’t really know any of the—parties. Unless—” He paused, and his mild blue eyes looked thoughtful. “There are tradesmen in the neighborhood; I’ve only been here a short time but I’ve got to know some of them very well, due to Mr. Beacham allowing me to charge my food on his bills. So I was thinking, maybe they could tell me something about that other chap. I don’t know of any other way to locate him. Unless Mr. Beacham knows.”

  “Mr. Beacham doesn’t. Miss Cassidy took care of all domestic arrangements.” He saw the man’s waiting look. “Why sure. You talk to the butcher and the baker. You can write me whatever you find out. I’m leaving late tonight, going back to the country. Here.” He took his card and wrote the Mountain House address on it. “But you
don’t need that, do you? You have it already.”

  “Yes, sir.” He looked as if he were turning something over in his mind. “Those shopkeepers, they may not want to talk to me if they think there’s anything—odd. You know how people are when it’s a question of law. Even respectable people. They don’t want to be involved. They—they’d rather lie than tell something that might save a chap.”

  “I know,” Mark said, “but do what you can.”

  “Oh I will, I will! But—”

  “But what? Go on, Mr. Shaw.”

  At the unexpected title the old man’s head went up and a faint pink crept into his thin cheeks. “I was thinking,” he said firmly, “that if you would write my name on your card, sir, if you’d write something like ‘Introducing Mr. Albert Shaw,’ why then they’d pay me some attention. I wouldn’t abuse it, sir. You could count on me for that. And I’d only use it if I had to.”

  Mark took out his pen once more. It can’t do any harm, he thought. “Don’t get me in trouble, now,” he said. He wrote the introduction as it had been dictated, and got up to go.

  Shaw preceded him to the door and bowed him out. He held the card like a citation.

  “So long,” Mark said, raising his hand. Mr. Shaw returned the salute gravely.

  There was a fine mist falling, but he walked the few yards to Fifth Avenue and entered the classic Greek lobby of the Peck-Sutton apartment house. Here he was greeted with suspicion and what amounted to silence. He was not asked to sit down; rather, he was herded into a dark corner behind a palm.

  The manager coldly admitted that the Pecks resided there. They had done so for five years, he said, but he didn’t know them. Oh yes, he knew them by sight, but that was all. Mr. Peck paid his rent promptly, gave no noisy parties, and after all—. He shrugged.

  Mark tried him on the Suttons. Yes, he knew the Suttons. Mr. Sutton was a gentleman of the old school. The boy was away all winter, at one of our finest universities. So naturally—. He shrugged again.

  “Pay their bills promptly too, and don’t give noisy parties?”

  The manager colored. “We have never had the police before. It has never been necessary. I am afraid I can’t give you any further information. Good morning.”

  “I’m not the police,” Mark said. “I’m a private detective in the employ of Mr. Michael Beacham, and I’m investigating a murder.”

  “Murder!” The manager stepped back. Even his voice was pale. “Whose murder?”

  “Miss Mary Cassidy’s. It was in the New York papers. You can read, can’t you?”

  “I don’t believe I—I don’t recall it. Miss—Miss Cassidy?”

  “Yes. A member of what you would undoubtedly call the Beacham menage. She was stabbed in the throat and thrown down a well. Did you know her?”

  “I? No!”

  “You know the Beachams?”

  “By reputation only. I think I’ve seen them. I don’t know. . . . Are the, are the Pecks and Suttons—involved?”

  “Not yet,” Mark said cheerfully. “But unfortunately for them they were with Miss Cassidy a few minutes before she disappeared. Do you get the point now?”

  The man was trembling, but not, apparently, from guilty knowledge; it looked like a personal panic.

  “How long have you been in charge here?” Mark asked.

  “Eight months!” He was so eager that his words overlapped. A faint but unmistakable accent broke through the veneer of crisp, hotel English. He tried, unhappily, to bite it back, to cover it with gestures, but it was out of the bag like a cat. “Eight months! It is only eight months and already I am doing well! If something should happen to a good tenant, I mean if I should say something that is not my affair at all, and they become angry and leave—!” He mopped his brow. “But I tell you I know nothing!”

  “I get it. You’re afraid you’ll lose your job. I know how you feel and I’m sorry, but think this over. Don’t hold anything back. It will mean worse trouble in the end. If you change your mind, or remember anything, anything about Miss Cassidy’s relations with your tenants, drop me a line.” He wrote the Mountain House address on another card and handed it over. Johnny Appleseed, he said to himself; maybe one of these will grow something too. “Any objection to my presence in that restaurant over there?” He indicated a black and white marble crypt with Pompeian red table cloths.

  “No, no!” The manager stood back. “It—it is public.”

  Mark went in and took a table far from the door. It was only eleven but he thought he could handle a cold melon and some more coffee. He changed his mind quickly when he saw a neat replica of the Parthenon in the opposite corner, stacked with bottles and glasses. When a youthful waiter came to take his order he had already planned his approach.

  “Don’t tell me it’s too early for a Martini,” he said; “one, very, very dry. Nick Sutton says they’re the best in New York.”

  “Yessir! That Nick, he knows!” The boy hurried away.

  Now, thought Mark, if the boss doesn’t get to him before I do, I may find out something. Maybe. When the drink came he told the boy to wait while he sampled it cautiously. His face mirrored a spurious joy. “That Nick, he knows,” he agreed.

  “Yessir. You a friend of Nick’s?”

  “Known him ever since he was born. Sad story.”

  The boy’s face was honestly blank. So he didn’t know that one.

  “We’re spending the summer in the same place,” Mark went on. “Grandpa’s a lively old duck, isn’t he?”

  The boy agreed heartily. The gentleman had said it! What a guy!

  When the gentleman craftily pressed for details it developed that this enthusiasm was only an ambitious young waiter’s attempt to please a customer.

  “I don’t hardly know the old guy,” the boy admitted. “I seen him going out and coming in, that’s all. He don’t talk to nobody. Never buys a drink, neither. George takes care of that upstairs.”

  “George!” Mark beamed. “Don’t tell me this isn’t a small world! I was drinking with George and his girl just before I came down here. It looks to me like New York has seen the last of our Georgie. He’s in love. He says he’s going to settle in the country, on a farm.”

  The boy collapsed over the back of an empty chair. “Not Georgie! Not Georgie in no country! He’ll die. Wait’ll I tell the girls!”

  “What girls?”

  “Sisters. He’s got five, up in Eighty-sixth. Nice folks. I was up there a couple nights ago, and they didn’t say nothing about George getting married and living in the country. Maybe he never told ’em. Maybe it ain’t serious.”

  “I think it’s serious, all right. He thinks it will be good for his lungs. They were pretty bad, weren’t they?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.” The boy was suddenly sober. “He coughed a lot. It hurt you to hear him. It was the girls that made him take that Sutton job in the country. He was only here two weeks before they went away, but in one day he owned the place. Ain’t he coming back, honest?”

  “That’s what he says. He’s having a good time up there. You know the Pecks have a place right next to the—”

  Then it came, a sibilant whistle from the direction of the bar. They both looked over and saw the barman’s beckoning finger. He was replacing the receiver on one of two phones in a corner of the Parthenon. House phone, Mark said to himself, with the manager on the other end.

  “Excuse me, sir,” the boy said. “If you want another one before I get back, lean on the bell.” He hurried away. Mark knew he wouldn’t come back.

  He didn’t want another one, so he left a dollar bill on the table and went out. Buster’s little screen had so far yielded nothing, not even a hint. Cora and Kirby were still doubtful and, short of a trip to Lexington, he could do no more at the moment. Nothing on the Suttons, nothing on the Pecks, nothing on George. He wasn’t disturbed about George and old man Sutton. They hadn’t gone to the supper and they’d been seen on and off all evening, on the lawn, on the veranda, in their own r
ooms. Suppose the answer was in Bear River after all? He recalled the beaming picture of Mrs. Briggs, Mrs. Moresby, who was Pansy’s cousin, and Pansy herself. Mabel Homesdale. The Reverend Mr. Walters. Even, he reminded himself, the rabbity Mr. Briggs, who had cast his shadow at the feet of the ladies. He hailed a cab and drove down to East Twelfth Street.

  Miss Rayner lived in a remodeled brick house and the doorbell placed her on the third floor. He pressed the bell marked “Superintendent” and a colored man in a denim apron put his head through the area railings.

  “Suh?”

  Just like the Little Colonel, Mark noted. “I’m looking for Miss Rayner,” he said, “but she doesn’t answer her bell. Is she out, do you know?”

  “She been out since way back,” the Negro grinned. “She go to the country for the summer.”

  “Oh.” Mark sat down on the bottom step. “That’s too bad. Some friends of hers asked me to look her up when I was in town. I thought I’d take her out to lunch.”

  The Negro’s grin widened. “Too bad ain’t half. She like nothing better than free meals. Miss Rayner a very close lady with her money and don’t I know it.”

  “Like that, huh?” He made a sympathetic sound. “Maybe I’m lucky after all. What’s she like? Pretty?”

  “Pretty? Before God, man, she close to one hundred years ole! You ain’t miss nothing.”

  “Cigarette?” It was accepted graciously. “Her friends told me she was very popular. Always gadding about.”

  “They lie. That ole woman don’t go nowhere except it free. Except them little trips she take, couple times year. She go way a couple days now and then. Change of air, she say. Don’t do her no good nohow. She come back looking worse.”

  “When’s she coming home, do you know?”

  “She write me a penny postcard last week and say to clean her place good on account of she come back soon. My wife going to clean tomorrow.”

  “I don’t suppose you’d let me in her apartment, would you, just to write a little note?”

  The man’s eyes narrowed. “I couldn’t do that, suh,” he said politely. “Much as I like to oblige a gentleman I couldn’t do that. That against house rules.”