Death of an Angel

by Frances Lockridge

  “Probably,” Bill said. “How did you happen to be there, Mr. Strothers?”

  Wesley Strothers was staring at the floor. For a moment, it appeared that he had not heard. But then he said, “Oh. I went to see whether she’d work for me this fall.” He looked up. “Housekeeper, you know,” he said. He waved at the apartment. “Going to go the whole hog,” he said. “From rags to riches. From two rooms to five. I’ll have to get somebody, and I thought of Rosie.”

  He had, he said, thought of her as a possible keeper of his new apartment that evening. He had “had an engagement uptown anyway,” and had left early enough to go by the Park Avenue apartment. He had, he thought, got there around eight. The elevator was unattended and he had ridden up to the eighth floor, rung the doorbell, been admitted by Mrs. Hemmins. He had talked to her briefly. She had agreed to take the job.

  “Pleased about it, poor old girl,” Strothers said. “Kept on thanking me—saying she hadn’t known what she was going to do or where she was going to go. That sort of thing. Thought once she was—hell, going to kiss me.”

  “You talked to her in her room?” Weigand asked.

  Strothers said he had not. They had talked—it hadn’t taken long—in the room just beyond the entrance foyer.

  “I didn’t have too much time,” Strothers said. “I had an engagement.”

  “With Miss Shaw,” Bill said. “Yes.”

  For a moment Strothers looked puzzled. Then he said, “Oh, that fellow East.”

  Strothers said he had offered to advance Mrs. Hemmins money to tide her over until she went to work for him, and that she had said that wasn’t necessary—yet, anyway. Then Strothers had left.

  “When you were with her,” Bill said. “She wasn’t carrying anything?”

  “Carrying anything?”

  When her body was found, Bill told him, she had been clutching a wadded up tea-towel.

  Strothers shrugged. He said he didn’t remember anything like that. Had she been wearing an apron? Strothers was sure she had not. Did the tea-towel mean anything? Because it seemed to him that there would be a dozen ways of explaining it. Perhaps, for example, she had spilled something on her dress, and had got a towel to wipe it off.

  “Perhaps,” Bill said. “At first, she didn’t act to you as if she were expecting anyone?”

  Strothers looked at the floor again, his eyes narrowed. Then he shook his head. Then he said, “No, I didn’t think that, exactly. Not then. Now it’s pretty obvious.”

  Bill waited. Strothers looked up at him.

  “I don’t like to say this,” he said. “Probably nothing to it. But—when I was getting a cab after I’d talked to the poor old girl I thought I saw somebody I knew. In front of the building. He was a good way off and I was in a hurry and—you know how it is?” He waited. Bill Weigand waited, too. “Got in the cab and said to myself, ‘Wasn’t that Sam Wyatt?’”

  “And you couldn’t be sure?”

  “Nope. Didn’t matter anyway. Or—didn’t then. Chances are it was just somebody who looked like him. Only—well, there it is. For what it’s worth. You can ask him.”

  “It was Mr. Wyatt,” Bill told him. “He mentioned seeing you, Mr. Strothers.”

  “So? That’s what brought you here? Well—I’m glad I didn’t try to hide I’d seen her. I thought of it, there for a moment. Thought, what’s the use? Just get myself involved. Just as well I didn’t. I suppose I oughtn’t to tell you I even thought of it.”

  It was a very natural impulse, Bill told him; an impulse very wisely resisted.

  “So,” Strothers said. “I didn’t kill the poor old girl, if that’s what you were thinking. Just offered her a job. Left her—smiling. All dressed up and smiling, and with the cat rubbing against her legs, the way they do.” He paused. “You think she knew something? About Brad’s death?”

  It was, Bill told him, the most likely possibility, and at that Strothers nodded, said he supposed so. He said, “Brad was a hell of a good friend of mine.”

  Bill Weigand waited.

  “We hit it off,” Strothers said. “One of those things. I went after him for backing, first off. But I got fond of the big goof. Guess he did of me. You know how those things happen, sometimes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Saw a lot of him. Used to go around with him—him and Phyllis, I and whoever turned up. That was before he fell for Nay, of course. Went on binges together, a few times. At his place, a good deal. Even went out to his Long Island place once or twice but, God, everybody talked about horses. Now and then, as a big concession, about dogs.”

  “He planned to marry Miss Shaw,” Bill said. “Take her out of the play. That didn’t make any difference?”

  “That—” Strothers began, and said, “Wait a minute.” He went back to the kitchenette and poured himself coffee from the bubbling percolator. He added cream. He looked at Bill Weigand, and Bill shook his head once more. Strothers brought his coffee back, and sat down facing Weigand.

  “No,” he said. “It didn’t make any difference. Hell, who could blame him? Nay’s a dish. But—she’d have stayed on in the show. All she had to do was to bring him around. Way he felt, he’d have done whatever she asked, in the end.”

  “And—she wanted to stay on?”

  “Would have, when she thought about it. One thing about Nay, she’s a trouper. At bottom. Take more than getting married to keep her off the stage. Hell—it did before.”

  “So you weren’t worried?”

  “No. I wasn’t worried. Poor Sammy may have been. After all, he doesn’t know much about show people. First time he’s done a play, you know. Also—well, Sammy’s an excitable sort of guy. You’ve seen that, haven’t you?”

  Bill nodded.

  “Between us,” Strothers said, “he’s not very well balanced. All that finger snapping. Always imagining things.” He shook his head. “Of course,” he said, “Sammy’s a writer. Never knew one that—” He shrugged to finish the sentence. He drank coffee. “Also,” he said, “Sammy didn’t know Brad. Brad didn’t louse things up for people. Not that sort of guy. But Sammy didn’t know him. Well?”

  “One other thing,” Bill said. “You were at this stag party Mr. Fitch gave before he died?”

  “Sure,” Strothers said. “On top of the world, poor Brad was.”

  “Mr. Wyatt was there?”

  “For a while. As I remember it, he left early. Early as things go at that kind of binge.”

  “You stayed later?”

  “A bit later.”

  “Mr. Fitch had been drinking a good deal?”

  Strothers shook his head. This time he smiled.

  “Probably,” he said. “I didn’t think about it at the time because—well, he just went along with the rest of us. I’m afraid I—lacked perspective.”

  “How about Mr. Wyatt?”

  “I don’t remember anything special. I suppose he’d had a few. Everybody had.”

  Bill Weigand left Mr. Strothers drinking coffee. He went back to his car and to Homicide East. Detective Willings waited for him.

  Mr. and Mrs. James Nelson admitted readily that they had been at the apartment; agreed that they had probably arrived a short time before eight; agreed that, leaving, they had found the elevator without an operator and had, themselves, pushed the proper buttons. And—they had seen Mrs. Hemmins, alive and well, and had left her so.

  Why had they gone?

  They had got to talking, Mrs. Nelson said—then doing the talking for both of them. “He just sat there and nodded; almost went to sleep a couple of times,” Willings reported. They had got to talking about what they would do with that barn of a place, when they took it over.

  “They seem pretty sure they’re going to take over?”

  “Yes sir. You mean they’re not going to?”

  “I’m afraid they’re going to be disappointed, Freddy. Go ahead.”

  They had, Mrs. Nelson said, decided to go down and have a look at their prospective property—and
problem. They had found Mrs. Hemmins, and she had taken them through the apartment. Followed by Toby, the cat. Mrs. Hemmins had been wearing a black dress.

  “Very proper and everything,” Mrs. Nelson told Willings, who not only spoke her language, but looked the part. “Only—”

  Only—Mrs. Hemmins had looked several times at the watch on her wrist. “As if she wanted us to go. I supposed she was expecting someone. So we didn’t stay long—just long enough to look around. Because I feel so strongly that people who impose on servants—”

  “Write it out in the morning,” Bill said, looking at his own watch.

  He went home, then. He found Dorian, very lovely in a pale green negligee. He had time to kiss her once before the telephone rang.

  Dogged would do it, Jerry North supposed. He would keep a stiff upper lip and his shoulder to the wheel—and his hand to the plow, for that matter—and even the weariest Braithwaite would wind somewhere safe to print. If only the man could, even once, encounter an infinitive without splitting it. From stem to stern. He was, he thought, beginning to think like Mr. Braithwaite. But thousands of readers were waiting. Braithwaiting. Jerry laid Page 342 face down and started on Page 343. Pam said something from the bedroom, where he had assumed her sleeping. Probably, wasn’t he ever coming to bed? Probably, didn’t he know it was past midnight?

  Jerry had been writhing in one of Mr. Braithwaite’s sentences, and Pam’s words came to him dimly. He reached the end of the sentence and was conscious of a vague dissatisfaction. Not with Braithwaite—there was nothing vague about that. This was the slightly guilty consciousness of having missed something. Listening back, it did not feel as if Pam had said it was getting late, or even that, if he got no sleep, he would be no good the next day. It sounded—

  Forget it, Jerry told himself. Now and then she says things to herself. For emphasis, probably. He stiffened his upper lip, and started the next sentence. “Ragweed.” “Ragweed?” There wasn’t anything about ragweed in the sentence. Mr. Braithwaite’s heroine was retreating up winding stone stairs, preparing for the—unsuccessful, if he knew Braithwaite—defense of her virtue in the tower room. There was nothing about ragweed in it. Why, then, had he suddenly thought, “Ragweed”? He—

  Jerry North took off his glasses and laid them on the Braithwaite manuscript. He moved very carefully. He went out of his study and across the hall and to the open door of the bedroom.

  Pam North was very wide awake. She was sitting up in bed. She looked at Jerry in some surprise.

  “Pam,” Jerry said. “You said something?”

  “Did I?” Pam said. “I’m sorry, dear. I know I do sometimes. How is Mr. Braithwaite?”

  Jerry gestured Braithwaite aside.

  “Listen,” he said, “did you say something about ‘ragweed’? By any chance?”

  “Ragweed?” Pam said. “What about ragweed. Oh, that. No, I don’t think so. Anyway, I’ve got way past that, now. That was hours ago.”

  “Just a minute ago,” Jerry said. “What about ragweed?”

  “Goldenrod’s better,” Pam said. “More apposite. Because a field of goldenrod is really very pretty.”

  “Please,” Jerry said. “Please, Pam.”

  “Oh, it’s nothing,” Pam said. “Or, actually, it’s very obvious. Nobody hates goldenrod. Enough to kill it, I mean.”

  “I don’t …” Jerry said. “Wait a minute. Ragweed! Goldenrod?” He almost snapped his fingers. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “people do. Or try to.”

  “Not personally,” Pam said. “What I mean is, you don’t go out to a stalk of goldenrod and—and pull a knife on it. Say, ‘That for you, goldenrod.’ It isn’t personal. It isn’t as if he was afraid of them. They merely get in his nose. And sinuses, probably.”

  “Pam,” Jerry said, and spoke very carefully. “You’re talking about Wyatt? And cats?”

  “Of course,” Pam said. “I don’t think you ought to try to read Mr. Braithwaite when you’re so sleepy. What did you think I was talking about?”

  Jerry went into the room. He sat on his bed and looked at Pam in hers. He steeled his mind against distraction.

  “All right,” he said. “Let’s have it.” She grinned at him. “With a straight face,” he said.

  “Sam is allergic to cats,” Pam North said. “They give him symptoms. But—he isn’t an ailurophobe. He doesn’t hate them, as people who are uncontrollably afraid of them do. So, he wouldn’t wantonly kill a cat. And Mrs. Hemmins’ cat was killed wantonly.”

  “He may have attacked the murderer.”

  “Jerry!” Pam said. “And you a cat man! Oh, defending kittens, of course. But not defending people. We have to admit that.”

  “All right,” Jerry said. “We have to admit that.”

  “Then,” Pam said, “wantonly. But still—why? Because the cat was there—there and alive? A kind of sadism? That’s too easy, isn’t it? Or, because there’s somebody else who’s really a cat hater?”

  “Well,” Jerry said, “that’s possible, isn’t it?”

  “Oh,” Pam said. “Possible.” Her tone dismissed it. “Anything’s possible, I suppose. Or—because somebody wanted to put it on Sam Wyatt?”

  “Well—” Jerry said. “As you say, anything’s possible.”

  “Some things much more than others,” Pam said. “Everybody who knows Sam knows about this allergy of his. And, most people think it is the same thing as ailurophobia. You know they do.”

  “I don’t suppose most people think much about it one way or the other,” Jerry said. “But—probably you’re right.”

  “So,” Pam said, “the murderer is some woman who knows Mr. Wyatt, knows about this—ailment of his, and so killed the cat for good measure.”

  “Good measure? And—wait a minute. You said—”

  “Mr. Wyatt had already found Mr. Fitch’s body. He had a motive. Mrs. Hemmins had made this mistake about his having symptoms before she let him in the apartment. He’s a little odd anyway. He’s an ailurophobe. Ergo, he kills cats. That’s what’s supposed to be thought.”

  “Wait,” Jerry said. “Please wait, Pam. Why a woman? And, why are you so sure Mrs. Hemmins made a mistake?”

  “Because,” Pam said, “a woman killed Mr. Fitch. And Mrs. Hemmins. Not Sam Wyatt.”

  Jerry ran a hand through his hair.

  “Killing the cat is the last thing Sam would do, of course,” Pam said, rather obviously making it all clear to a plodding mind. “Because it would point to him. So, if he didn’t kill Mrs. Hemmins, Mrs. Hemmins made a mistake. I don’t see how it could be any clearer.”

  “Because then he didn’t kill Fitch?”

  “Of course. Whoever killed Mr. Fitch killed Mrs. Hemmins. Because she had found the tea-towel.”

  “I’m not sure,” Jerry said, “that Braithwaite isn’t easier. Not so—stimulating, perhaps.” He looked at her. “I speak purely of intellectual stimulation, of course,” he added.

  “It’s a great time to tell me,” Pam said. She clasped her hands behind her head.

  “Perhaps I spoke too soon,” Jerry said. “Anyway—what about the tea-towel?”

  “Wadded up,” Pam said. “People get in habits about them. Some people, when they’ve finished with a tea-towel, and it’s damp—from wiping dishes, you know—”

  “Yes,” Jerry said. “I know, Pam.”

  “From hearsay,” Pam said. “However—some people would no more think of not hanging a damp towel up, carefully, to dry than they’d think of flying through the moon. Other people just wad them up and drop them somewhere. Because they’re so glad the dishes are done.”

  “A man might do that.”

  He still missed the point, Pam told him. Of course a man might. Probably would. But, in this case, it was an instance of an established habit—something so habitual that it was instantly identifying. Had been to Mrs. Hemmins. Therefore, it was somebody who had often been in the small serving pantry off Fitch’s quarters on the second floor of the duplex
and, had often wiped dishes there and had always wadded the tea-towel up. In other words, a woman friend.

  Jerry shook his head, but he shook it slowly.

  “The only reason Mrs. Hemmins would have had the tea-towel in her hand,” Pam said, “was to show it to someone. She did that only because it meant something. It wasn’t a particularly interesting tea-towel; it meant something because it was wadded up. Is it clear so far?”

  “I guess so,” Jerry said.

  “So—she found it in Mr. Fitch’s little serving pantry after he was killed. Somebody had used it to—” She paused. “Well—” she said.

  “Things had been cleaned up,” Jerry said. “The tray the stuff was served on—to avoid fingerprints on the glass—had been washed. And dried, I suppose.”

  “That’s it,” Pam said. “I just couldn’t think for a minute. She found it there—probably when Mr. Wyatt went to the lower floor to telephone the doctor—and it meant something to her. Meant—the identity of the murderer. She saved it and tried blackmail.”

  She waited. She said, “You see now, don’t you, darling? Hell hath no fury.”

  “I suppose,” Jerry said, “you mean Phyllis Barnscott? You’ve come round to her?”

  “Oh,” Pam said, “I started with her, really. As soon as I realized it wasn’t Sam. Because, while I love Bill, of course, I thought it was mean of him to tease Dorian the way he did at the Algonquin.”

  Jerry ran a hand thoughtfully through his hair, He had thought Pam started with ragweed. Ragweed had come into it—

  “So,” Pam said, “I’m not stimulating any more?”

  She could not, Jerry decided, be left under so absurd a misapprehension.

  11

  Monday, 1:25 A.M. to 12:20 P.M.

  It had taken Bill Weigand some little time to get there. He had garaged his car, and had had to wait while a sleepy attendant was aroused, while the Buick came—with a kind of reluctance—down a spiraling ramp from the third floor. By the time Bill had driven to Naomi Shaw’s small house, others of his trade almost filled the house. Mullins met him at the door.