by Craig Rice
“Thanks. Well, we went to Paris. That was three years ago. She treated me like a daughter. Everywhere she went, I went with her. All of a sudden, I was in. See?” A curious, grim note came into her voice. “Don’t get this wrong, Mr. Malone. I wasn’t good to her and didn’t take good care of her just for what I could get out of her. I’d have taken care of her as though she was my own mother, if she hadn’t had a dime. I’d have gone out and worked to support her. She was the only person who’d ever been good to me, she and her husband. Just before he died he told me to stay with her and take care of her, and I did. I would have anyway. She was the only person I ever cared anything about.”
“I understand,” Malone said quickly. “Of course I do.” He looked at her closely and handed her the gin again.
“Thanks. Then after about a year and a half, she died. I found she’d left me ten thousand dollars, with a little bit of advice to invest it for my future. Well, I invested it all right. I stayed on in Paris, not living high, but correctly, if you know what I mean. Keeping in touch with the people I’d met through her. Like Mona McClane.”
“That’s how you met Mona McClane,” Malone said.
She nodded. “She visited us. She was a friend of Mrs. Abbot. She invited me to come and visit her if I ever got to Chicago. I met Ross McLaurin there, too.”
“Now,” Malone said, drawing a long breath, “we’re getting somewhere.”
“You see, I’d figured on making that ten thousand last until I married somebody and made myself solid in the place I wanted to be. He looked like a wonderful opportunity, a kid right out of the bushes and still crying over his mother. I’d never paid much attention to men before, but I paid plenty to him, and it took. When he beat it back to this country, I followed as soon as I could. I’d hitched up with an ambulance unit at the outbreak of the war, but in the fall I was at loose ends again. I got over to this side and found he was staying with Mona McClane. So I remembered her invitation.”
She smiled, a wan, bitter smile. “I blew the last of the bankroll on clothes, dropped Mrs. McClane a little note, was invited to come right along, and here I am. I’ve got exactly twenty-four dollars left in the world. That didn’t worry me when I arrived, because I figured Ross and I would tell it to a justice of the peace before long. It would have happened, too, except for these murders.”
Suddenly she leaned forward, her face half hidden in one hand. “I’m not as bad as I sound. I’m in love with him.”
Malone waited nearly five minutes before he said, “I see,” in the gentlest of tones.
She sat upright again, her chin high. “Well this seems to have done it up. I haven’t murdered anybody, but I might as well have.”
“Somehow,” Malone said, “I have a feeling that if Ross McLaurin ever does hear that story, it isn’t going to make any difference.”
Lotus Allen smiled with just one side of her face. “Suppose it doesn’t. I’m still under arrest for murder.”
“Leave that to me,” he told her. “That’s what lawyers are for.” He slid off the table and began pacing the floor, his hands in his pockets. “You never met this man Tuesday?”
“Never. And I never met that man—in there.”
“Ever meet the Vennings?”
She shook her head. “Not until I came here.”
He paused and leaned against the table. “Listen, my dear. I want you to tell me exactly what happened on New Year’s Eve. Everything. If it sounds incriminating to young McLaurin, tell it anyway. Half my job right now is keeping him out of the hands of the police.”
She drew a long breath. “We all went to dinner at Mona’s club and ended up at the Panther Room. Ross had been drinking. There was some young friend of Mona’s—I can’t even remember his name—who was along, and he paid a lot of attention to me. Ross didn’t like it, and did some more drinking. All of a sudden I came off the dance floor—I’d been dancing with this other man—and Ross was gone. We hunted around for him after he’d been missing nearly a half-hour, and finally someone told us he’d been seen in the bar. But when we looked there, he’d disappeared. Finally Mona said not to worry because nothing could happen to him, and that he’d turn up. He did. He was at Mona’s the next morning.”
Malone scowled at his cigar. “That isn’t much help, but it’ll have to do. Now about yesterday. The afternoon, I mean.”
“There isn’t anything I can add to what I told you then. Ross had been drinking again. I’d been in my room all afternoon, when I heard Helene come in. I went to see if Ross was in any condition to come downstairs and found him passed out cold. I met Helene in the hall and went down with her. That’s all.”
“Did you notice Tuesday’s door being open or closed?”
“No.”
“Did you see him any time after his arrival?”
“No. The first time I saw him was when we went up—and found him dead.”
Malone was silent for a while. “How long has he been drinking like this?” he asked at last.
She knew that he meant Ross McLaurin. “Not long. He used to drink a little now and then, but not much. Once in a long time he’d get to thinking about what a poor willful child Francesca was”—she managed not to make it sound catty—“and went on a bender. That didn’t happen often, though. It’s really just since New Year’s Eve.”
“I wish it hadn’t been just since New Year’s Eve,” Malone said gravely.
She stared at him. “It had been, though. And when he drank, he seemed almost dazed. As though something had happened that night that—” she stopped suddenly, her eye wide and dark. “Could it be that? The something that happened—”
“It could,” Malone said. “But don’t worry about it. No jury in the world—” He paused, frowned, and repeated, “It could, very easily. But I’m damned and double damned if I think it is.”
The relief in her eyes was pitiful.
“You’re pretty well alibied for New Year’s Eve.”
She started to nod, stopped suddenly, and turned pale. “No, not entirely. I went off looking for Ross and spent nearly a half-hour at it.”
“What time was that?”
“I don’t know exactly what time I left. It was just before twelve when I got back to the Panther Room.”
The little lawyer groaned. “You might have made it harder for yourself, but I can’t imagine how. Don’t worry, though. I’ll get you out of this.”
She smiled at him, with lips and eyes both. “I don’t know how you’ll do it, but I believe you.”
“Thanks. Now get this. No matter who asks you what, stick to your story about New Year’s Eve and yesterday afternoon, exactly as you’ve told it to me. Don’t get rattled and don’t get scared.” He eyed her speculatively. “I don’t think you will. Be good to the newspaper guys, especially the photographers. When they take pictures let them pose you, they know how. Look brave and sad, and use a shade more lipstick than you usually do. A little leg in the picture won’t hurt, either. I hope none of this is necessary, but everything helps in case this ever does come before a jury.” He patted her shoulder. “Don’t worry about Ross. I’ll take care of him.”
He took her arm gently and led her back to the other room. “She’s yours, von Flanagan. But not for long.” He stood buttoning his overcoat and looked around the room. A sudden thought made him wince.
Of all the possible suspects who had been in the house at the time of Gerald Tuesday’s murder, he would have to get, for a client, the only one who didn’t have any money!
Chapter Twenty-One
Helene agreed that a quick cocktail or two at Mona McClane’s would be a good idea, though she added that she, Jake, and Malone would have to rush away before long. They had important business to attend to.
No one spoke on the way. As Mona McClane’s big black town car drew up before the house, Mona leaned over toward the lawyer and said softly, “You’re sure she’ll be all right?”
“Not a thing to worry about,” Malone assured her
. “I’ve never lost a client.”
She smiled faintly. Standing outside the car she turned to him again and said, “Another thing—as far as your fee is concerned—”
“Forget it,” Malone said quickly and gruffly, and immediately kicked himself on the ankle.
A fire was roaring cheerfully in the black marble fireplace in the immense McClane living room. Everyone gathered around it, gazing into the brilliant blaze as though for comfort. A maid appeared with a tray, with big glasses of some scalding-hot and pungent drink.
Mona McClane had on a dress of vivid violet beneath her black coat. She ran her fingers through her short black hair, smoothed out the heavy black bang over her forehead. For an instant as she sat in her high-backed brocade chair, she looked like some exquisite Japanese doll.
“I don’t see—” Helene began and stopped suddenly.
It seemed to Jake as though the silence could be cut up into pieces. Everyone was waiting for someone else to speak first.
What seemed like hours later Mona McClane said, “The curious thing about it is that the man in the morgue actually looked a little like Gerald Tuesday.”
Pendley Tidewell blinked and goggled. “He was Gerald Tuesday.”
She made an impatient gesture. “They couldn’t both be Gerald Tuesday.”
“Why not?” Malone asked, reaching for one of the glasses. “Look at the number of people named Henry Olsen. Why couldn’t there be two Tuesdays?”
“It’s like having a month of Sundays,” Pendley Tidewell said. He laughed, noisily, and completely alone.
There was another uncomfortable silence.
Michael Venning rose, walked to the fireplace, and leaned one elbow gracefully on the mantel. “This ghastly rain,” he said, filling his pipe. “I don’t see how people stand it.”
Mona McClane smiled at him gratefully. “The weather has been frightful, hasn’t it?”
In another minute, Malone thought, someone would start discussing the Cubs’ chances in the next season’s play.
Venning looked at the windows streaked with gray and then at Malone. “I suppose we’ll be forced to stay here until this business is over. Witnesses and all that.”
“I’m afraid you will.” Malone told him, “and it may take months, the way things are dragged out in Chicago.” He hoped heaven would forgive him for being malicious.
The tall man frowned at the fireplace. “The day it’s over, we go to Florida. Mona, your hospitality is matchless, but I can’t endure this infernal weather.”
“It has been beastly for January,” Mona said, managing to sound politely apologetic without taking the blame. “That reminds me, Editha. I have bad news for you. The cleaner reports your coat was ruined.”
“My coat?” The pale woman’s face was faintly puzzled.
“The one you had on yesterday when you got caught in the rain.”
“Oh, that. It doesn’t matter, I never liked it.” She smiled weakly. “I was simply drenched. It came down like a burst faucet for a few minutes. Mona, that drink was delightful, but may I have a Scotch?”
“Help yourself,” Mona McClane said.
Malone noticed that she poured out a good three fingers. She looked like a very well-preserved but artistic ruin, he decided. That single white plume in her dark hair undeniably gave her a certain distinction. He observed that Louella White’s watchful eyes measured the Scotch in the glass down to the last drop, but she made no move to interfere. Then evidently a mild touch of dipsomania wasn’t the trouble.
“We had all kinds of rain in the Orient, of course,” Michael Venning was saying reminiscently. “But it was different. That had a kind of melodramatic quality to it. This is simply dreary. Everything was different there. Really, you know, when one has such a short life to live, why shouldn’t one live it in the colorful and dramatic places of the world?” There seemed to be a faintly defensive note in his voice.
“It’s a good thing everyone doesn’t feel the same way,” Helene said, “or the Orient would be even more overcrowded.”
“I was terribly homesick there,” Editha Venning said unexpectedly, downing the Scotch. Without any warning tears began to stream down her face, leaving great streaks in her pale powder. Everyone tried to look as if nothing unusual were going on, and in a moment she dried her face on a huge handkerchief handed to her by Louella White.
“How about you, Louella?” Venning said, with an attempt at lightness. “How do you like the Chicago climate?”
“I don’t mind it,” the large woman said. Malone stared at her. She was becoming downright talkative. He noticed that she had taken out her knitting again, methodically and rhythmically working on the ugly gray garment. For some reason it gave him a slight touch of the horrors.
Mona decided it was time to get the conversation off the weather. “I’m so glad to see you and Jake together again,” she said to Helene.
“Oh, but we aren’t,” Helene said brightly. “Just because we can be in the same room without tearing at each other’s throats doesn’t mean a thing, you know.”
“But Helene—” Jake began. He felt Helene’s heel on his instep and was silent.
“We never meet unless our lawyer’s present,” Helene added.
Jake felt someone crawling around back of his chair It turned out to be Pendley Tidewell.
“Would you mind if I took a picture of you sitting beside your ex-wife?” he asked hopefully. “I never got a picture before of—” He paused, and blushed.
“Go right ahead,” Jake said amiably. “When Helene and I finally get into court, you can probably sell it to the newspapers for a lot of money.”
Mona McClane managed to keep everyone talking about the floor show at the Chez Paree for five more minutes. Then Jake, Helene, and Malone said good-bys all around and left.
“Another five minutes and my hair wouldn’t have just turned white, it would have fallen out,” Helene said, leaning back against the cushions in the taxi.
“You can’t blame well-bred, sheltered people for feeling edgy when hell breaks loose in their midst,” said Malone.
“And another thing,” Jake said indignantly. “What was the idea of telling Mona McClane—”
“Use your head. I’m staying at Mona McClane’s because I’ve left my husband. It’s the only inside wire we have to what goes on in the McClane household. I’ve got to stay there.”
“You mean you’re not coming home with me?”
“Not until we win that bet,” she said firmly. “I’ve got to have some excuse for staying on as Mona’s guest, and this is the only one I have.”
“But damn it, Helene,” Jake complained. “You can’t—”
“After the bet is settled,” she said.
“For two cents,” Jake growled, “I’d punch you in the nose.”
“Bargain day,” Helene said. “Or the second episode in the family life of the Justuses.”
Malone decided it was a good time to tell the story of Lotus Allen, nee Angelo. When he had finished it, Helene’s deep blue eyes were wide and almost misty.
“Malone, you’ve got to get her out of this. The poor kid—she can’t be more than twenty-one or twenty-two. And he’s just twenty-two. A couple of babies.”
“Lost babies in the woodsies,” Jake said gravely. “Malone, are you going to get her out of jail?”
“She’s my client, isn’t she?” the little lawyer demanded indignantly.
Helene said, “Now that we’re alone, what about this business of the two Gerald Tuesdays?”
“Yes,” Jake said. “What do you think about these two guys?”
“I think they’re dead,” Malone said sourly.
“Both of them died the same way,” Helene said thoughtfully. “Both of them tried to get a message to you before they died. Some message concerned with a key, and the number 114.”
“If we only knew what had happened to that key,” Jake said.
“Even if we did,” Malone said, “there must be a hundr
ed thousand doors in the city numbered 114.”
Helene sighed. “None of it seems to fit together, but it must. There must be some link, but we don’t know what it is.” Suddenly her eyes flickered. “There is one link that we do know. Every person concerned in this business came here from somewhere else.”
“Louder please,” Malone said.
“Lotus Allen and Ross McLaurin came from Europe. The Vennings came from the Orient. They were driven back here by the war. The two Tuesdays had come here from somewhere else. They had shoes bought from a London bootmaker. Clothes made by a London tailor. But maybe they didn’t come here from London. They might have come here from anywhere.”
Malone tossed his cigar butt out the window. “It’s true. While the people involved in this all seem to have come from very different parts of the world, the fact remains that they all came here from some other country. The link may be there, though we can’t see it. All but Mona McClane, and she doesn’t come from places, she goes to places.” He paused, reached for another cigar. “The first man called himself Gerald Tuesday when he registered at the LeGrand Hotel—” He broke off suddenly, dropped the cigar, and called to the driver. “Stop at the corner. I’ve got to make a phone call!”
“Malone—” Jake began. The lawyer didn’t hear him.
“Wait for me in the cab. I’ll be right back.” He grabbed the cigar off the floor as he got out, darted across the sidewalk, and disappeared.
Jake shook his head. “I don’t want even to guess.”
Three minutes later the little lawyer returned. He was scowling heavily.
“It wasn’t it. It was 726.”
“What was?”
“The number of the room the first Gerald Tuesday got at the LeGrand Hotel. It wasn’t 114.”
“Oh,” Helene said. “Just plain oh.”
It was the last anybody said until the taxi pulled up before Malone’s hotel.
“If we can only get this boy to talk,” Helene murmured.
“If we could only get him plastered again, he would,” Malone grunted. He paused at the desk, learned there were no messages, and ushered them into the elevator.