Mr. Rowe was grinning. “Throw them in jail?” he said.
“Jail nothing,” Harley Granger said. “He put ’em up in the hotel.”
All of a sudden Mr. Rowe got very serious. He looked at me. Harley Granger saw me then, too.
“What do you know about this, Joe?” he said.
“No more than you do,” I said, which was almost true.
Mr. Rowe was staring at me. “Did Pete bring the boys into the hotel?” he said.
“That’s right.”
“What time?”
“Why—around two-forty-five.”
“But why?” said Harley Granger. “Why the hotel?”
“What’s wrong with the hotel?” I said.
“The boys have got homes,” Granger said.
“Pete was just trying to make it easy for you,” I said. “The kids were plastered, raising hell. He didn’t want to worry you by bringing them home in that shape. He also didn’t want to put them in jail. He paid for the hotel rooms out of his own pocket.”
I don’t know why I stuck up for Pete that way, but I had never liked Harley Granger and I didn’t like his attitude about a poor dumb cop who was only trying to help him out.
“I’ll pay my own bills,” Granger said.
“Pay Pete,” I said. “You don’t vote him enough pay to keep him alive anyway.”
“He gets more than he’s worth.”
“Well, what’s the rest of it, Harley?” Mr. Rowe said. “There must be something else.”
“There is,” Granger said. “What I want to know is, where is the kid now?” He stuck out his chin and stared at me.
“He’s probably home in bed,” I said.
“No, he’s not. He never came home. He’s not home now, and I don’t think he’s in town, even.”
“What makes you think that?” Mr. Rowe said.
“I got this note, just a few minutes ago. It was in the mail box along with the rest of the mail. Only it hadn’t been mailed. It was just dropped in there.”
“Let’s see it,” Mr. Rowe said.
Granger handed him the note. Mr. Rowe read it and passed it to me. It was written in pencil on a piece of hotel stationery and it said:
I’m going away. Don’t try to find me. I’ll be all right. I can’t stay in this town any longer. Say good-by to Mom.
Sam
I gave the note back to Granger.
“What do you think of it, Joe?” said Mr. Rowe.
“I don’t understand it,” I said.
I told them about taking the kids’ clothes and locking the door.
“Somebody must have helped them,” Mr. Rowe said.
“Yeah, but who?”
“I never did trust that Jack Pritchard,” Granger said.
“Pritchard’s all right,” I said. “He might have given the kids their clothes, but he’d have told me about it—and with pleasure.”
“Where’s Pete now?” said Mr. Rowe.
“Last I saw of him he was over at the hotel,” I said.
“We’d better go over and see him,” Mr. Rowe said. “Maybe we’ll find some clue as to where the kid went.” He got his hat from the rack behind his desk and we went out.
“You think the Blake boy went with him?” Granger said.
Mr. Rowe shrugged. “Maybe. Heard anything from Tosh Blake?”
“No.”
Nobody said anything then until we got into the lobby, and by that time nothing that anybody said made much sense.
At first glance, it looked like half the town had swarmed into the lobby. The second look showed me that there were only the half-dozen old duffers from out front, Pete Haley, Harry Baird—awake for once—and Nancy Wheeler. Nancy was carrying on something terrible, throwing her apron over her head and pulling it down again and all the time hollering in that muffled, throaty voice.
I went up to Harry Baird. He was sitting beside Nancy on a sofa, trying to get her calmed down. The o’ gaffers were hanging around, chewing and staring. Mr. Rowe and Granger followed me.
“What’s up?” I asked Harry Baird.
“Goldang it,” he said, “I can’t git nothin’ out of her. She’s been carryin’ on like that for five minutes.”
“Nancy,” I said loudly, “what’s the matter?”
She just made more noise and less sense. I shook her a little and she quieted down some. She stared at me with those pop eyes and shivered all over like a scared dog.
“What happened?” I said. “Say it slow.”
Her lips moved a lot, but for a long time no sound came out. Then finally she began to make the words.
“That—schoolteacher—” she said.
“Marian Mason?” I said.
She nodded.
“What about her?”
Nancy’s lips worked again. “She’s—dead.”
“Dead?”
“She’s dead. Been kilt.”
“How do you know she’s dead?” I said.
“She’s layin’ there with a knife in her. There’s blood on her!”
Then she went off the deep end again. I looked at Pete Haley. Pete wasn’t doing so well. His hat was off and he was mopping his forehead with that bandanna. Everybody else was looking at him, too. He cleared his throat and put his hat on, but he couldn’t think of anything to say. I stood up.
“You keep the people out of here, Pete,” I said. “Don’t let anybody go upstairs and if anybody comes down, don’t let them leave. Harry, you take care of Nancy.”
Mr. Rowe touched my shoulder.
“I’m acquainted with Weaver, the county attorney,” he said. “Suppose I call him?”
“Sure,” I said.
“What about my boy?” Harley Granger said.
I turned around and looked at him.
“Yeah,” I said. “What about your boy?”
Harley Granger looked like he was about to strangle.
“Where are you goin’?” Pete Haley called.
Without stopping, I said, “I’m going to do a little investigating.”
I made for the stairs and the second floor. My watch said eleven-forty-five.
CHAPTER 3
Miss Mason’s room was to the right at the top of the steps. Number 9. A front room, with south and east windows. I admit that my heart was beating faster than usual. Miss Mason was the town sensation. She had come in the fall, a new teacher in the high school. She was the most beautiful dame to hit Preston in many years, so they told me.
I took out my handkerchief and placed it gently over the knob, twisted it carefully, pushed the door open and walked into the room.
The sight of the undraped female form is a thing men will look for from the time they know what it is until they are in the grave. And I am no exception. But believe me, brother, murder makes a difference. A naked woman is one thing. A naked corpse is something else. It is not anything you want to hang around and stare at.
Miss Mason was not lovely anymore. She was too dead. She lay on her back, her head on a pillow, her auburn hair spread out over it in a tangle. Her arms lay close to her sides and were slightly bent at the elbows. One leg was crossed over the other at her ankles and she was twisted to one side from the hips down. Just under her left breast, the handle sticking straight up, was the knife. It was an ordinary butcher knife, the kind you’ll find in any kitchen, a dark brown handle with brass rivets holding it together. There was a thin dark line of blood running from the edges of the wound the knife had made down her side and a little blob of it on the bedspread. It wasn’t much.
Her face was gray. Her lips were thin and tight across her teeth. Her eyes were closed.
It all seemed out of joint. The sun streamed in the window. There was a spring smell in the air. You could hear traffic on the street below and the kids playing and yelling at each other.
I found myself looking at Miss Mason’s face, saying, “I’m sorry, kid.”
Then I jerked my eyes away and looked around the room. The east window was open, the s
hade up. It gave on a fire escape, an old iron staircase that went straight along the east side of the building to catch each room on that level and then dropped away sharply to the alley in the back. Across the way rose the wall of Mr. Rowe’s bank. A dirt area way ran between the bank and the hotel from the street to the alley behind the buildings. I went over to the window and looked at the sill. There was a light film of dust on it and some smudges. I got down close and looked. There were outlines of footprints in the dust on the sill. You would expect to find something on the sill, probably footprints. But you might not expect to find these particular footprints. The funny thing about these was that there were only two prints. One pointing out and one in. Both of them were small and both had been made by bare feet—or, more truly, by one bare foot, the right one. Unless they had been made by a very dainty guy, they were a woman’s footprints.
“What do you know?” I said to myself. “Looks like she was killed by a one-legged woman.”
I went to the foot of the bed and bent over and stared at the bottoms of Miss Mason’s dead feet. They were as clean as you’d want them. Not a smudge. Not a dust streak anywhere.
There was a dressing gown, a filmy, pink and white business, lying across the footboard of the bed. On the bed, part of it crumpled under Miss Mason’s feet, lay a blue nightgown. On the floor beside the bed was a pair of blue slippers with white puffs on the toes, and a pair of bath slippers, wooden soles with straps. There was no other clothing in sight. A wardrobe trunk stood in a corner of the room. The closet door beside the dresser was closed. I opened it and glanced inside. There were dresses and things hanging up, neat and undisturbed, and on the door hung a clean white laundry bag.
“A neat lady,” I thought. “Stuff she had been wearing put away. Place for everything. Nothing lying around.”
I closed the door and looked over the dresser. There was toilet stuff, mirror, comb, brush, boxes of powder and some bottles of perfume, nail polish, toilet water, and one thing and another. These were all neat and clean. Also on the dresser was a candy box. It had been used for candy once, but now it contained cookies, small chocolate cookies with bits of nuts in them. There were maybe a dozen left. They were homemade cookies and they smelled wonderful. I reached for one, then stopped.
Like stealing the pennies from a dead man’s eyes, I thought.
There was nothing else on the dresser except some marks. Here’s where she wasn’t quite neat. There were some rings on the dresser scarf that would have been made by wet glasses. There were quite a few rings, all interlocking. You couldn’t tell whether there had been one glass or two or three. I touched the stains. They were still damp. I glanced into the closet again and around the room, but there were no glasses in sight.
I took a last look at Marian Mason’s body. I was surprised that there was such a little bit of blood. But I didn’t get any ideas looking at her, so I went out of the room and downstairs.
In the lobby things had quieted down. Most of the people were gone. Pete stood over by Harry Baird’s desk, still mopping his neck but looking less red in the face. I said nothing to him, but stepped into the sitting room of the suite and closed the door behind me. I looked at the litter on Singer’s desk and stopped. He’d only been in bed a couple of hours. It was damned hard to get him there, and now I was thinking of waking him up again.
Maybe, I thought, it could wait till the county attorney showed up. Give him another hour’s sleep.
No, I thought. It is at times like these that Joe Spinder needs the wisdom of Singer Batts. Because, to be frank, I don’t think that county attorney is going to be able to figure this thing out. And I think maybe Singer Batts will.
So, asleep or not, I thought, he’s got to get up and think it over.
I stepped over to Singer’s bedroom and opened the door quietly. I looked into the room. The bed was as neat as a pin. Hadn’t even been opened. Singer was sitting in his old Boston rocker by the window, fully dressed. He smiled at me as I came in.
“What is it, Joe?” he said.
“What’s what?”
“What’s the trouble?”
“You never went to bed at all,” I said.
“No. I’ve been waiting.”
“Waiting! To find out what the trouble is?”
“Yes, Joe.”
“But there wasn’t any trouble when you started to go to bed.”
Singer just smiled.
“How’d you know?” I said. “Who tipped you off?”
“Nobody,” Singer said. “It was clear that something was on your mind. I thought that sooner or later you’d come and tell me.”
“But this is something different.”
He stopped smiling. “Yes?”
“We’ve got a murder on our hands.”
His voice was a whisper. “A murder, Joe?”
I saw that old look come into his eyes and I began to get scared.
“Who?” he asked.
“Marian Mason.”
“Who is Marian Mason?”
“Marian Mason has been living in this hotel for about two weeks. She came to town last fall. She is a schoolteacher and a very luscious dish.”
“Did the murder take place in the hotel?”
“Yeah. In the hotel. I have seen her corpse with my own eyes.”
“Well, Joe,” he said, settling himself in his chair, “you know how to handle these things better than I. You’ve called the District Attorney?”
“Mr. Rowe called him around twelve noon.”
“Well, I imagine they’ll have it straightened out in no time.”
He looked out the window.
So now I could see it. We were going to have to play that game again. I took off my coat and sat down on the edge of the bed.
“Now listen, Singer,” I said. “You know that phony from Montpelier won’t be able to figure this thing out. He’ll just try to pin it on somebody and maybe he can make it stick and maybe not.”
Singer was still gazing out the window. “Well?” he said.
“Well, then, somebody’s got to really figure it out.”
“Whom do you suggest?”
“You,” I said.
“I thought so.”
I heaved a sigh of relief.
“Okay,” I said. “We’ve got that far.”
“No, Joe,” Singer said. “I can’t undertake it.”
“Why?” I said. “You figured out who killed Abel Morris on his farm two years ago. You figured out that double murder in Montpelier—the man and wife that died in their car. You figured out who robbed Harry Oats’s jewelry store and killed the cop on the road to Detroit. No cops could figure those out. You did.”
“But I was pushed into those cases, Joe. I didn’t want to. I’m a theorist—not a detective. I’m a scholar. I do it out of books.”
“So,” I said. “Now you’ve got a real-life case. Right in your lap.”
“But I don’t like real-life cases. I hate murder.”
“Who doesn’t?” I said.
Singer shivered. “No, Joe. Really, I’m not up to it. You handle it.”
I looked at him. “Oh sure. Me. I’ll handle it. I’m just the best little detective there is.”
“Don’t be bitter, Joe. It’s just that I—”
“All right,” I said. “Forget it.”
I tried to look hurt as I put my coat on and picked up my hat.
It’s a funny thing about Singer Batts. He’s not a coward. You can’t scare him with a gun. I’ve seen him stand up to gorillas twice his size without batting an eye. But when it comes to murder, he shrinks from it like a cat from water. He just doesn’t like to mess around with it. Once he gets started, he goes through with it. You can’t drag him away. But he certainly hates to get started.
When I opened the door Singer said, “I’m sorry, Joe.”
“That’s all right,” I said. “The hell with it.”
I dropped my hat on the desk in the sitting room and went back to the hotel lobby
.
There was quite a gang out there now. Most of it was hanging around Pete Haley. Pete was sweating and rubbing his big red neck with the bandanna, trying to answer all the questions without committing himself. There was another gang around Harry Baird. He was getting grumpy. He kept waving toward Pete Haley. It was a dirty trick. Pete had all he could do. But Harry was red in the face and disgusted and wouldn’t say anything. Then there was a third little gang, mostly women, gathered around one of the old davenports near the big east window, listening to Nancy Wheeler. Nancy was having a hard time telling the story. She would talk a little, then half-scream, remembering, then cry a little and wipe her eyes, and then talk again, faster and louder than ever.
“So I went right ahead,” she was saying, “not knowing a thing, and opened the door, like I always do, to get in there and clean the room, and then I dropped my duster and them clean sheets and all right on the floor. Because there she was, in broad daylight, laying there on the bed, stark nekkid, a big knife sticking in her chest, and blood all over everything. My land, I tell you—” and Nancy broke down again and the women gasped and looked at each other, shaking their heads, clucking and making out that it was the most awful thing they ever heard. But you could tell most of them were lapping it up.
I went up to Pete.
“Did Mr. Rowe call the D.A.?” I said.
“Yes,” Pete said. “He’s comin’ right over. Mr. Rowe went back to the bank.”
“All right. Get these people out of here. Harry will help.”
Pete gave me a desperate look but he began to move the people out. I got hold of Harry Baird.
“Help Pete clear this lobby,” I said, “and send Nancy Wheeler home. Then go down to the tavern and get me two quarts of bourbon.”
Harry blinked. Then he opened his eyes wide.
“Oh,” he said. “It’s like that?”
“It’s like that,” I said.
Harry moved away.
As I turned from the desk, Curly Evans came into the lobby from the stairs, swung up to the desk in his big, muscle-bound way and threw his key to me.
“Up kind of late, aren’t you?” I said.
Hue and Cry Page 3