Four Lost Ladies (The Hildegarde Withers Mysteries)

by Stuart Palmer

  By the same token, Miss Withers thought, she should have a bloody nose. “They say everyone should have a hobby,” she remarked. “Yours is farming—mine’s murder.”

  “I know—and our offer of cooperation is still open, whether you want to follow the Santa Barbara lead up or not. The number out there was Arroyo 184.”

  “Really? Well, thank you for the buggy-ride, Mr. Brady.”

  “Glad there are no hard feelings. And lots of luck to you.” He waved his hand, and then drove sedately on up Central Park West.

  “He didn’t say what kind—good or bad,” Miss Withers reminded herself a little pawkishly as she strode down the short block to her own door. As usual, Talleyrand’s ecstatic welcome almost knocked her off her feet. Doglike, the poodle always greeted her with a brass band and the keys to the city, even when she had been away ten minutes. “You’d think by the fuss he makes that I’d come back from the dead!” the schoolteacher observed to Jeeps when the girl came in a little later.

  “Only you don’t ever, do you?” Jeeps said in a strange little voice. “They’re with you every minute—the dead, I mean.”

  Miss Withers peered at her curiously. “Alice Davidson Junior, what ails you?”

  “Nothing. Maybe a rabbit just ran over my grave.” The girl tossed her coat onto a chair and dropped to her favorite supine position on the rug. “Maybe I’m not cut out for this sort of work. Don’t you ever think it’s a little ghoulish? I mean, digging into murder and things like that. My aunt and the others are dead and gone, aren’t they? What earthly good will it do to go snooping and prying—”

  The schoolteacher gasped indignantly. “Should we then emulate the misguided people of India, who let cobras run loose and bite people?”

  “I know, I know,” Jeeps said with deep weariness. “But one gets so jittery, and so suspicious of everybody and everything.” But she would not say of what in particular.

  “Have you and fifteenth-assistant dreamboat had a quarrel?”

  Jeeps shook her head. She was staring at an unlighted cigarette as if she had forgotten what such things were for. “Come, child,” said Miss Withers briskly. “The larder’s bare, and somebody has to go marketing. You’ll be home for dinner, I take it?”

  “Oh, I guess so. Let’s just open a tired old can of beans or something.”

  “Talley and I, at least, are meat-eaters. Come along, you need the air.”

  The girl sighed, but rose to her feet. As usual Talleyrand was eager enough for two, and they had to take turns being anchor for the dog and trying to prevent him from salvaging secondhand chewing gum from the sidewalk. “Thank heavens,” said the schoolteacher, “he hasn’t taken up smoking as yet.”

  Jeeps pointed out listlessly that they had already passed the market.

  “I thought that while we’re in the mood for a walk we might just go on downtown and pay a call on Mrs. Herbert Baker. Because it seems odd to me that a woman who didn’t even have help at home to do the breakfast dishes should be carrying around five or six hundred dollars in cash. Besides, when I was sitting next to her in the auction room she flashed a gold monogrammed lighter, and whatever the initials, they weren’t H.B.”

  “But after all, you got the valise that counted. What do you care about the rest of Harriet’s stuff?”

  “I care why somebody else cared.” The little procession marched on in silence until it finally bumped its nose on a pier at the foot of 56th Street. “Dear me!” cried Miss Withers. Number 1117 would have had to be halfway across the Hudson.

  “Was the woman a mermaid or something?” Jeeps wanted to know.

  “There was something fishy about her, certainly. Oh, well. Another dry run.”

  “It’s me,” the girl burst out suddenly, with deep bitterness. “You shouldn’t have brought me along. I’m a Jonah. I’m the worst jinx in the world. Nothing ever goes right when I’m around!”

  Miss Withers decided that Jeeps was tired, and managed to hail a taxicab, but even after they were back home again the girl refused to be comforted. It was late that night, and the schoolteacher was trying to read herself to sleep with a copy of Sir Thomas Browne’s Urn Burial when she suddenly sat up in bed. There was the sound of muffled but unmistakable sobbing from across the room. “Jeeps!” she said softly.

  There was only silence. “Alice!”

  “I’m asleep,” came the unsteady voice.

  “You certainly are not. Why don’t you tell me what’s wrong?”

  “Everything is! It’s no use, I’m just a hindrance to you. I’d better quit my job tomorrow and pack up and go home.”

  “Come, come. You mustn’t let these little setbacks discourage you. Aren’t we almost ready to take the bull by the horns and set off a depth-bomb that will smoke Mr. Nemo out into the open? Isn’t the Project ready to go—almost?”

  “Oh, that’s not it. I—I’ve just been doing mental arithmetic. Problem—how long does it take a one-hundred-dollar-a-month bellboy to save up enough for a three-thousand-dollar convertible?”

  There was a long, long silence.

  “He told me it was a birthday present from a rich uncle of his,” Jeeps blurted out. “But when I first met him we were kidding about horoscopes and he said he was born under the sign of Gemini—that isn’t February, it’s May and June!”

  “Some men lie all of the time and all men lie some of the time,” Miss Withers said as comfortingly as she could, and turned out the light. But the only sound sleep enjoyed in the apartment that night was Talleyrand, perched on the top of the kitchen stove.

  Tomorrow, as the saying goes, was another day. It happened to be the first day in which Tad Belanger laid aside forever the monkey-jacket of his bellhop days to enter on the late shift behind the hotel desk clad in quiet pin-stripe flannel.

  “Well, Mr. Belanger, how goes it?”

  Tad started suddenly, for he had been in a sort of a daze. And he couldn’t get used to being mistered, and especially not by Brady. The chief of security looked harried this evening; he had come down into the lobby without his usual hat and coat, and though it was after seven he had not yet changed into dinner clothes.

  “It goes just fine,” the young man answered hastily. This was no time to explain that he felt lonely and strange in his new eminence, that he missed the free and easy camaraderie of the other bellboys, who now looked at him as enlisted men look at a second lieutenant. Nor could he find words to explain his feeling that somewhere in the normal humming of the great hotel had come a strange vibration, a harsh note of strain.

  “Good,” said Brady absently. “Er—I just received a phone call. That Withers woman is up to something. Any idea what it is?”

  “No, sir. My contact in that direction has petered out. Miss Davidson hangs up when I call.”

  “Too bad.” Brady looked annoyed. “Seen Jerry Forrest around?” Tad nodded and pointed across the lobby. The public-relations expert was talking to Wanda, the girl at the theater-ticket agency counter, but her eyes chilled as Brady bore down in their direction. She murmured something about a nice pair in the sixteenth row center. “Save it, sister,” Brady said. “Jerry Forrest wouldn’t pay to see Adam and Eve with the original cast, and besides, he’s going to be busy tonight.”

  “Now who’s in trouble?” Forrest demanded as the two men walked a little away.

  “You are, I guess. Remember Miss Withers alias Goggins? Well, she just phoned, taking advantage of a polite gesture I made yesterday. She wants some advice in your line, so go over and see her.”

  “Why can’t she hop on her broomstick and fly over here?”

  Brady was unsmiling. “It’s a delicate situation. I ran into her downtown and asked her to work with us on this thing. If you can’t lick ’em, jine ’em. Now she’s got some bee in her bonnet and I want you to find out what it is.”

  “The things I have to do for a room and a bath!”

  “Don’t underestimate the old battle-ax just because she wears comic-valentine hats.
Carrie Nation was a silly dame too, but she damn near ruined the saloon business. I’m scared of her.” Forrest started to laugh, but Brady held up his hand. “Scandal can ruin a hotel—look at the old Manger over on Seventh. So play along with her.”

  “Oh, my poor aching back!” Forrest said.

  It was worse, if anything, than he had anticipated. At Miss Withers’s apartment there was no sign whatever of the decorative little Davidson girl, but to make up for that Talleyrand was much in evidence. Before the first amenities were over, Jerry’s lounge suit was well decorated with apricot-colored fuzz. And then the happy, excited schoolteacher showed him what she had up her sleeve.

  “Yipe!” he cried, when he could talk. “You—you just can’t do that!”

  “But I just am!”

  “First of all—it’ll cost a mint of money.”

  “I have a mint of money, or at least enough. Thanks to that poodle. Down, Talley! Mr. Forrest doesn’t want to hold you on his lap when he’s working.”

  “But I’m not working—”

  “You will be, in a minute. Here’s everything laid out on the dining-room table. It’s very rough, of course. The drawing and the photographs leave something to be desired, too. Now be frank with me, Mr. Forrest, just how do you think this idea of mine ought to be handled?”

  “Ma’am,” he said earnestly, “I’ll tell you. With a pair of tongs!”

  He had finished and gone, and Miss Withers was busily changing back a midtown hotel to the Hotel Grandee on the copy he had assisted her with, when Jeeps came home shortly after midnight from the last show at the neighborhood movie. The schoolteacher looked up, “My, it must have been a sad picture. What did you see, The Snake Pit?”

  “No. Just some tired old comedy or other.”

  “Oh? And you laughed so much your eyes are still red and puffy?”

  But the girl had disappeared into the bedroom. A little later Miss Withers followed her. Jeeps, fully dressed, lay face down across the bed. “He phoned you again,” the schoolteacher said.

  “Did he?” Jeeps sat up. “Not that I care.”

  “Of course not. But he did phone, and that’s more than I can say for Oscar.”

  “Did you tell Tad I had a date?”

  “I said you were out, young woman. Do your own lying.”

  “Did—did Mr. Forrest say anything?”

  “Not about Tad. He seemed a bit overwhelmed with the Project. But he does know his trade. Everything is ready. The fuse is laid, and I set fire to it tomorrow morning. All we can do now is to sit tight and hold onto our hats.”

  It would have been well had she given the same warning to Inspector Oscar Piper, for the explosion when it came a few days later found him as unprepared as the hapless inhabitants of Hiroshima. He had come down to his office that morning early and as usual had spent the first few minutes in glaring at the place. He missed the old room at Centre Street, the cheery clatter of the teletype machine in the corner, the tension of Headquarters. On this exalted level he learned about what was going on only after it happened, after it was cold and usually ready for the Closed file.

  Probationer Fink marched in with the morning mail, all neatly opened for his perusal. Over on Homicide there hadn’t been much bothering with letters. They worked with the ticker, the phone, or dragged information out of stoolies. Seconds counted. He saw that Fink waited, pencil and notebook in hand. “Later,” Piper told her. “There’s nothing here that couldn’t wait until next month anyhow.”

  She shrugged and went out. The Inspector pushed the mail aside, hoping it would get lost among the clutter of Out and In baskets, ash trays, lighters, leather memo pads, pen sets, and paperweights. Then something on the top of the pile caught his eye. At first it had appeared to be only another Wanted flyer, following the usual official format and type-style, but there were four photos here instead of the usual full-face and profile of some pug-ugly public enemy—four smiling, attractive feminine faces, all staring at the camera.

  Across the top was the legend: Have You Seen These Women? and beneath each photo was a name and physical description, couched in somewhat flowery language. Below that, in bold-face type: These four women are thought to be among the victims of a modern Bluebeard. They have all disappeared within the last five months, and their last known address was the Hotel Grandee on Park Avenue, NYC. A reward of $5,000 will be paid to anyone giving information which leads to the discovery of their whereabouts or to the apprehension of their slayer. Contact Acting Chief-Inspector Oscar Piper, New York City Police Headquarters, at Spring 7-3100. …

  “Judas priest on a red-hot stove!” gasped the Inspector. That was bad enough, but there was a second sheet. It was headed: Have You Seen This Man? and there was the reproduction of a pen and wash drawing of a smiling, debonair, middle-aged dandy, dressed to the teeth. The face looked familiar, hauntingly familiar, until you realized that it was blended of a dozen faces—movie stars, actors, models, all examples of full-blown masculine American beauty.

  Below that was a somewhat fanciful and purely imaginary description of Miss Withers’s Mr. Nemo, and then, again in bold-face: This man is suspected of being responsible for one murder and four disappearances of middle-aged, unattached, well-to-do women. During the past six or seven months he has been allegedly operating in and around the Hotel Grandee, New York City. He is thought to be a resident or a habitué of the hotel. $5,000 will be paid for information leading to his arrest and conviction. Contact Acting Chief-Inspector Oscar Piper. …

  “Fink!” he roared. “Get on that phone and get me Miss Hildegarde Withers at her home right away!” Maybe these were only proofs, maybe he could still stop her somehow.

  Probationer Fink was already standing in the doorway. She had been there some time. “Did you hear me? Get a move on!”

  But she only said, in the voice of Doom, “Assistant-Commissioner Kiley wants you up in the front office, right away.”

  “The dice of the Gods are always loaded.”

  —Erasmus

  11

  IT WAS A BEWILDERED AND slightly punch-drunk Inspector who rang the doorbell of Miss Withers’s apartment. Scars of the hour he had spent in the front office rankled in his soul. And then he saw his Nemesis, face to face. “How could you do it?” were his first words.

  “Why, Oscar, it was easy!” Miss Withers assured him proudly, intentionally mistaking his meaning. “It’s what I’ve been wanting to do all along. Of course I did have some help—an artist prepared the drawing, and there was a little grudging advice from Mr. Forrest, the publicity representative for the hotel, in handling the advertising end of it.”

  “You mean that besides sending those two daffy flyers to the police of just about every town and city in the land, there’s more too?”

  “But of course! I naturally wanted to make the biggest splash possible. So I arranged with an advertising agency to run the four pictures, the drawing, and basically the same message in advertisements in one hundred key newspapers. I was thinking of buying radio or television time, but Mr. Forrest advised against that.”

  “I’m glad somebody advised you against something! Tell me, is the Grandee footing the bill for all this?”

  “Why—not exactly. You know, getting the pictures was the hardest part. But Jeeps sent home for one of her aunt, the local news-photo services had shots of Nurse Brinker demonstrating her burpless baby bottle and of Mrs. Mae Carter when she won the radio jackpot give-away. Emma Sue Atkins was harder, but I finally called a Baltimore paper and found a free-lance photographer who’d taken pictures of her outside the courtroom when she settled her suit against the taxi company.”

  “I didn’t mean that.” Piper tramped the length of the room and back. “Look, Hildegarde! Just what in blazes do you hope to accomplish with this insane stunt? All along you’ve maintained that the four women are dead as mutton. What’s the idea of plastering their faces all over the country, then—and offering five thousand dollars reward?”

  T
he schoolteacher smiled gently. “Why, to prove that they aren’t anywhere! Because if they were, this campaign would force them to speak up—and they can’t do that because they’re dead. I don’t suppose there’s much chance of anybody remembering them at this late date—I mean anybody who might have seen them with Mr. Nemo before he did away with them. But he’ll start wondering. This whole thing is really an overt act, a smoke bomb to force him out into the open. Because he’s sure to jump to the conclusion that we know more than we really do.”

  “We could hardly know any less, could we? I tell you, Hildegarde, the only thing you’ll accomplish with all this waste of time and money will be to give the Department a black eye—and to probably get me suspended for three months with loss of pay.”

  “But why should anybody blame you for what I do?”

  “Why? Because,” and he almost shouted, “because you had to go and sign my name in big black letters on your posters!”

  “I only did that to make it look official and important.”

  “But it isn’t official! You have no authority to offer a reward in the name of the Department, and neither have I. If you’d given me some warning—”

  “You’d have stopped me somehow, and don’t you deny it. But don’t worry. I’m prepared to pay the reward if the situation calls for it.”

  “How? Out of your pension?” His laugh was bitter. “My main worry is what the trial board will do to me. Kiley is really out after my scalp now. The hearing is set for a week from tomorrow, by the way.”

  “Oh. Then I’ll go straight down to Mr. Kiley’s office, or to the Commissioner himself, and explain that it was all my idea and that you had nothing to do with it.”

  “No!” Piper cried. “You’ve done enough. For the love of heaven, stay away from Headquarters. You’ll only pour fuel on the fire. Can’t you just get lost?”

  “Very well,” she said meekly. “But it did seem to me that the best use I could make of the eleven thousand dollars I found hidden in Harriet Bascom’s valise was to use it to avenge her and the other innocent victims.”