Hue and Cry

by Thomas B. Dewey

  “Maybe,” said Singer. “Anyway, I’d like to see the list of things you found on Curly after his death.”

  “Now you’re not going to mess around with that case,” Weaver said.

  “I think it’s the same case,” Singer said.

  “What makes you think it’s the same case? He was shot. The Mason woman was poisoned.”

  “Yes,” Singer said. “You found the gun that killed Curly?”

  “Not yet,” Weaver said.

  “Did you find anything?”

  Weaver flushed. He pointed to a manila envelope lying on my desk.

  “It’s all in there,” he said.

  Singer opened the envelope and took the things out. There was the usual stuff: a key ring, a knife, some nails and screws, a wallet. Singer opened the wallet. There were a driver’s license, a draft registration card, some odd bits of paper with scribbling on them, a few bills, and a piece of paper that looked like a check. Singer opened it up and spread it on the dresser. It was a draft on the First National Bank for one hundred dollars.

  “Hm,” I said. “Looks like they paid him in advance for the work at the tourist camp.”

  “Yes,” Singer said.

  He put all the stuff back in the envelope and turned to Weaver.

  “I’ve brought with me Donald Eastman, who works in the bakery. Do you want to question him?”

  “Certainly,” Weaver said.

  “Please get Eastman,” Singer told me.

  I went back into my bedroom and nodded at Sam Granger.

  “Bring Eastman into the sitting room,” I said.

  Sam was certainly being a good boy. He got right up, took Eastman’s arm, and led him in.

  He didn’t have any fight left. He stood in front of Weaver s chair, his hands in his pockets, his shoulders slumped, staring into space.

  But Weaver was looking at Sam Granger. “Who are you?”

  “Sam Granger,” the kid said.

  “Are you one of the boys that stayed in the hotel last night?”

  Sam nodded. Weaver looked at his cop.

  “Go get that other kid,” he said.

  The uniform went out. Weaver turned to Eastman. “Your name Eastman?”

  Don nodded.

  “You work in the bakery?”

  He nodded again.

  “You ever see this salesman before?”

  Don turned his head slowly and looked. Then he shook his head.

  “You sneaked out of here this morning and went to the City?”

  Don nodded.

  “What for?”

  No answer.

  “What for?” Weaver repeated.

  Don didn’t even open his mouth.

  “Ask him if he has plenty of money,” Singer said.

  “Have you got plenty of money?” Weaver asked—then threw Singer a dirty look.

  Don nodded again. He looked like he’d been hypnotized.

  “Where’d you get it?”

  No answer.

  “Somebody give it to you?”

  Don shook his head, then nodded. Weaver had got to the end of the road. He couldn’t think of another thing. He turned to Singer. “All right, smart boy,” I said, “You ask the questions.”

  Singer smiled. “Glad to,” he said. “A little later, in the lobby.”

  “Why the lobby? Why not here?”

  “There are some other people I need to question too. There’s a pattern to this. It’s like a jig-saw puzzle.” Weaver sighed.

  The door opened and the uniform came in with Roy Blake. Roy had got cleaned up. He didn’t look so scared anymore. When he saw Eastman and Sam Granger he started to smile, then changed his mind. Weaver beckoned to him.

  “Now that your friend is here,” Weaver said, “maybe you’ll tell me something.”

  “We’ll tell you everything we know,” Sam said.

  “Did you know last night that Marian Mason was dead?”

  “Yes,” Sam said. “We sneaked out on the fire escape and looked into her room.”

  “You didn’t go into her room?”

  “No.”

  Singer broke in. “When you looked into her room, was the shade up or down?”

  “It was down,” Roy Blake said.

  “You put it up?” Singer said.

  “Yes,” Sam Granger said. “There’s no screens on those windows.”

  “And was the light in her room on or off?”

  “It was off,” Sam Granger said.

  I looked at Singer. Marian Mason could never have turned that light off.

  “Go on,” Singer said to Weaver.

  “Thanks,” said Weaver sarcastically. “When Spinder put you up for the night,” he said to the kids, “he took your clothes away from you. How did you get them?”

  Roy Blake looked at Eastman.

  “He helped us,” Roy said. “He got our clothes.”

  “Why?” Weaver said.

  “When we saw Miss Mason was murdered,” Sam Granger said, “we thought we ought to tell somebody.”

  “Why did you pick Eastman?” Weaver said.

  “We knew he lived in the hotel, right next to the room we were in. Besides—he was a friend of ours. And we didn’t have any clothes. We couldn’t go wandering around the hotel.”

  “So you went to his room and told him what you had seen?”

  “Yes,” Sam said.

  “What did he say?”

  “He said we’d better get out of town,” Roy Blake said. “He said they’d suspect us.”

  “But we didn’t have any clothes,” Sam said. “He told us he’d get our clothes for us. Every morning around three-fifteen old Jack Pritchard goes out to the kitchen to get something to eat. It was about three o’clock when we told Eastman about Miss Mason.”

  “And he went down and got your clothes and brought them up?”

  “Yes,” said Roy Blake.

  “And you went to the City?”

  “I did,” Sam said. “Roy wouldn’t go. I walked to Bridgeville and took the bus from there.”

  Singer broke in again. “Didn’t Don Eastman go down to investigate when you told him about Miss Mason?”

  “No,” Roy Blake answered. “He just took our word for it.”

  Weaver looked at Singer. “Anything else?”

  “No,” said Singer. “I think we’re ready to go ahead. Sam, will you take Don Eastman out to the lobby? Then you two boys had better go home and go to bed.”

  Sam Granger took Don’s arm and led him out of the room. Roy Blake followed.

  Weaver got up, “Can we start now?” he said.

  “Certainly,” Singer said. “You go find yourself a comfortable chair. Joe and I will be along directly.”

  Weaver went out, followed by his pals. Mr. Pfeffer had fallen asleep in his chair. Nobody paid any attention to him.

  “All right, Joe,” Singer said. “Go find Pete Haley, get him started, and take up your station.”

  I went out to the kitchen. Sure enough, there was Pete Haley, making himself a sandwich.

  “Pete,” I said, “when you get that sandwich made, go back your car into the alley behind the bank, head it toward the street, and stay in it.”

  “Sure, Joe,” Pete said. “Say—be all right if I take a glass of milk along with this sandwich?”

  “Help yourself,” I said, “but get your car ready.”

  “All right, Joe. Right away.”

  I left the kitchen, walked through the dining room and past the stairs, and sat down in the lobby near the switchbox.

  * * * *

  Doc Blane had not only brought all the people Singer wanted, he had even got them seated together, in a little row near the desk, with the curious onlookers behind them and out of the way. Mrs. Coolidge, a fat woman with a goiter, dressed in old-fashioned high buttoned shoes, sat at the end of the row on a sofa that had been pulled around to half face the desk. Beside her, huddled down and looking very scared, was Elsie Schaffner. Next on a small love seat were Mrs. Foga
rty and Tommy Rowe; and beyond them, in a straight chair, was Don Eastman.

  Behind them stood or sat the curious. Nancy Wheeler was there, peering at everything with her black little eyes. Doc Blane sat over in the corner. Near him stood Mr. Rowe, Tommy’s father. There was a low buzz of conversation, but it was hushed. Singer hadn’t come in yet.

  Over on the davenport near the big east window sat a guy I’d never seen before. He wore a dark suit and a black hat. He sat with his back to the room, looking out the window. Nobody spoke to him and he spoke to nobody.

  Weaver and his cronies were grouped together in chairs just behind Singer’s principal guests. Jack Pritchard, the night clerk, was behind the desk. He sat with his lips tight together, very disapproving, very glum.

  The door of our suite opened and Singer walked in. A dead hush fell over the lobby. Singer ambled over to the desk and leaned on it.

  “I’m awfully sorry to have dragged you good people out at this hour of the night,” he said. “But it’s very important. We’ve had a double tragedy in Preston, and I know we all want to get it cleared up. There’s a lot more to it than most of you people have suspected. I just happened to fall into some knowledge of it. But I want to make it perfectly clear that this is the case of Mr. Weaver, our District Attorney. He laid the groundwork. Without him, I couldn’t have done a thing.”

  In a pig’s eye, I thought.

  Everybody turned to look at Mr. Weaver, who beamed a little.

  Someday, Singer, I thought, you will undoubtedly be the President of the United States.

  “Now then,” Singer said, “Mrs. Coolidge—I understand you bought a couple of knives yesterday from a traveling salesman.”

  “Yep,” Mrs. Coolidge said. “Bought two. Little one to slice cookies, an’ a bigger one for the bread. Good sharp knives they was, too. Cost me somethin’, though. I’m gonna have to up my prices some to pay for ’em. ’Sides, got to buy another one now.”

  “Is that so?” said Singer.

  “Yep.”

  “You lost one?”

  “Yep. Day ’fore yestiddy I bought ’em—bought ’em that mornin’. That night when I closed up I seen one of ’em was gone.”

  “Which one?”

  “Big one,” she said.

  “It just disappeared?” Singer said.

  “Yep. First ’twas there, then ’twa’nt.”

  “Mrs. Coolidge, was Don Eastman at work the day before yesterday?”

  “Yep.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Coolidge. Mr. Weaver has ascertained that Miss Mason was stabbed with a knife exactly like the one purchased by Mrs. Coolidge for the bakery.” He paused. “However,” he went on, “we know that Miss Mason did not die from a knife wound. She was poisoned.”

  Don Eastman jumped to his feet.

  “See—see?” he said wildly. “I told you I didn’t do it. I didn’t kill her—”

  “Sit down, Don,” Singer said. “Nobody said you killed her. The interesting thing is that you didn’t know until this minute that you hadn’t killed her.”

  I looked at Tommy Rowe. He sat staring at the floor, twisting his hands. He didn’t look at Don Eastman.

  “I want to turn from the actual killing of Miss Mason,” Singer said, “to the reason for it, the motive that lay behind it. This is not going to be very pleasant, but it is necessary if we are to get to the bottom of this mystery.

  “I would like to add that, tragic though it was, the death of Marian Mason has made it possible to put a stop to a grave menace that has hung over Preston for the last few weeks.

  “Elsie,” he said—and Elsie Schaffner turned scared blue eyes up at him—“you were a good friend of Miss Mason’s, weren’t you?”

  “Yes,” Elsie said, in a small voice. “She was my Latin teacher. I liked her.”

  “You went out sometimes with her, didn’t you?”

  Elsie looked down. “Yes, I did.”

  “And with whom did you usually go?”

  Elsie hesitated. Finally she said, “With Tommy Rowe—and Don Eastman.”

  “You don’t drink or smoke, do you, Elsie?”

  “No,” she said. “Well—once in a while I would smoke a cigarette when I was out with Miss Mason. But I never drank.”

  “Once in a while you would smoke a cigarette. Did you buy your own, Elsie?”

  “No. The boys always had them.”

  “I see. Did the boys ever offer you a strange kind of cigarette? A kind you’d never seen before?”

  It was getting pretty tough on Elsie. She swallowed hard and didn’t answer.

  Singer went on, very gently: “I know you never did anything wrong. You didn’t commit any crime, and you don’t have to be afraid.”

  She looked up at him.

  “How many of these strange cigarettes did the boys give you?”

  “Three or four,” she said.

  “Did you smoke them?”

  “Not all the way,” she said. “Just a little.”

  “What kind of cigarettes were they?”

  There was a long pause. At last she said, in a whisper, “Marijuana.”

  The guy in the black hat got up slowly and turned around. He leaned against the big window with his arms folded and watched Singer.

  Then I caught on.

  “Singer,” I prayed to myself and whoever might be listening, “you better be right. You kidnapped their witness. And I helped.”

  “So Don Eastman and Tommy Rowe gave you marijuana. Did Miss Mason smoke them, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “More than you did?”

  “Yes. She liked it, I guess.”

  “Did she ever offer them to you?”

  After a long pause, Elsie said, “Yes. She always had them.”

  “Do you know whether she offered them to others—to your schoolmates?”

  Elsie twisted her hands. “Yes. She did.”

  “And did either of the boys give you any cigarettes to give to your friends?”

  “Don Eastman did. Tommy Rowe never gave me any,” she said. “It was always Don.”

  “What did he tell you when he gave you those extra cigarettes?”

  “He told me to give them away to boys or girls I could trust, and tell them they could get more from him if they wanted them. He told me it was a crime to smoke them and if anybody found out about it, we’d all go to jail, even Miss Mason. But he said they wouldn’t really hurt you. It was just a superstition.”

  I happened to look at Doc Blane when she said that. His face was white. He was twisting his lips and looking at Don Eastman as though he wanted to strangle him. Don’s head was sunk on his chest and his hands hung loosely beside him. Tommy Rowe kept staring at the floor.

  “Just one more question, Elsie,” Singer said. “Did you ever go to the Sheraton Hotel, in the City?”

  “No,” Elsie said. “The boys talked about it a lot, and I wanted to go, but Miss Mason always said no.”

  Doc Blane couldn’t hold back any longer.

  “Thank God she had that much good in her!” he said.

  Everybody looked at him. Doc was confused. He covered his face with his hand and cleared his throat loudly.

  Elsie lowered her head and began to cry. Big fat Mrs. Coolidge leaned over and put her arm around Elsie.

  “Thank you, Elsie,” Singer said. “You’re a brave girl. You don’t have to stay any longer if you don’t want to.”

  After a minute Elsie got up and walked out of the lobby. A man got up from the back of the lobby and went with her. I guess it was her father.

  “The Sheraton Hotel,” Singer said, “is—or was—a center for the peddling of narcotics. It’s not pretty to think that that sort of thing would come spilling over into a nice little town like Preston. But unfortunately it’s true. And much as I hated to find it out, I have to say that Don Eastman was responsible for it.”

  He told about Eastman’s connections with the Sheraton mob. He didn’t go into detail about the fight we had, which w
as just as well.

  “Now then,” he said, “Curly Evans was one of the very few people in Preston who knew all about the Sheraton Hotel, and about Eastman’s connection with it, and about the fact that Miss Mason and Eastman and Tommy Rowe had been there. He knew it because he had made it a point to investigate it.

  “We all knew Curly. He was a hard-working, decent man who minded his own business. He was not the sort to sneak around sticking his nose in other people’s affairs, spying on them, snooping. Curly Evans didn’t investigate the Sheraton Hotel out of idle curiosity. He investigated it because he was paid to do so. He did it for hire. And he never breathed a word about it to anybody besides the person who hired him, except one—that one was Bill Fogarty.”

  “Who the hell is Bill Fogarty?” Weaver asked.

  “Bill Fogarty is very incidental to this case,” Singer said, “but he is important, too. He is important because he is the first link in the chain of circumstances that led directly to the murder of Miss Mason.

  “We already know that Miss Mason was involved with Don Eastman and the activities that went on at the Sheraton Hotel. But there was something else about her that we haven’t mentioned yet. It was found that at the time of her death, Miss Mason was pregnant.”

  Another sudden buzz of conversation. Singer spoke a little louder.

  “That is another unpleasant fact that we have to face. Now, as for Bill Fogarty—we know he quarreled with Miss Mason a few nights before the murder. As you know, Miss Mason lived with Mrs. Fogarty before she moved to the hotel. Before Bill enlisted, he used to run around with Miss Mason. They were quite friendly.” Singer turned to Mrs. Fogarty, who stared up at him out of wide, innocent eyes.

  “You told Joe and me,” he said, “that Bill and Miss Mason quarreled one night while Bill was home on leave.”

  “Yes,” she said. “That’s right, Singer.”

  “What did they quarrel about, Mrs. Fogarty?”

  He asked it sharply and a little sternly, as though he hardly hoped for a quick answer but was going to try.

  He didn’t get a quick answer. Mrs. Fogarty fluttered her hands and looked away.

  “Well—it was late,” she said. “Miss Mason had been out and came in very late. I’d gone to bed. Bill was sitting up, and they talked. But really, I was half asleep and I didn’t hear much of what they said. I—”

  “I think you did, Mrs. Fogarty,” said Singer. “I know it isn’t easy for you, but whatever happened was no reflection on Bill, and certainly not on you. It is important that we know why they quarreled.”