The Inspector whispered hoarsely, “What did you say?”
“Oscar, I’ll tell you. I was going to before, but you brushed me off and told me to go peddle my papers. But please stop pacing the floor like a caged panther. Here, take a comfortable chair and relax.”
“Relax, she tells me! With this knife-handle sticking out from between my shoulder blades!” But he sat down stiffly on the edge of a chair and listened.
“So you see?” she concluded. “Harriet didn’t have any motive for suicide, after all. Not with all that money.”
“No? You leap to conclusions like—like a puppy chasing its tail. Suppose this does knock out one motive, there could be others. Suppose she thought she had an incurable disease, or had been disappointed in love, or was a melancholic, or—”
“Fiddlesticks. If she had killed herself for one of those reasons, she wouldn’t have carefully set the stage for the theory of suicide because of financial worry. You’re not being altogether reasonable, Oscar.”
“Reasonable!”
“We’ll just have to catch Mr. Nemo red-handed before a week from tomorrow, that’s all,” she told him comfortingly.
“That’s all!” The Inspector stood up suddenly. “Judas priest in a—in a I don’t know what!” He swallowed, slammed his hat over his ears, and went out with a decided slam of the door.
Jeeps Davidson, who had been exercising Talley in the park, returned a few moments later. “Trouble,” said the girl.
“Talley? What did he do now?” Miss Withers asked absently.
“I mean a man. He’s watching this building from across the street. I think he was there this morning, too.”
“Already?” The schoolteacher perked up her ears. “But it could hardly be Mr. Nemo, in broad daylight. What did he look like?”
“Like anybody. Fairly old—about thirty-five. Gray coat and glasses. He pretended to be reading a newspaper when I looked at him.”
Miss Withers was thoughtful. “Perhaps it’s a reporter, only how would they get my name? Or—She turned suddenly and picked up the telephone. A moment later she was connected with the Hotel Grandee. “Mr. Max F. Brady, please.”
But Brady was out. “Mr. Forrest, then?”
Jerry Forrest was finally located. “Well,” he said, “you’ve gone and done it. The joint here is jumping.”
“You mean the cat is out of the bag already? Mr. Brady knows?”
“Brady and everybody else. He’s on the carpet in the manager’s office right now. Everybody in the hotel is going around looking suspiciously at tall handsome middle-aged bachelors. Ladies won’t ride on the same elevator with Peter Temple, and Count Stroganyeff is mad enough to move out, only he’s a couple of weeks behind with his rent. Reporters, photographers, curiosity-seekers—”
“But how did it get out so soon? We decided against ads in the local papers, on account of the expense.”
“Lady, there was a scarcity of news this week. The wire services, AP and UP and even INS, picked up the story and even ran the ads, pictures and all, on the telephoto machines. You’re making the papers everywhere—front page stuff.”
“Success!” said the schoolteacher. “Beyond my wildest dreams. Er—how did Mr. Brady take it?”
“How’d you expect? The sacred name of the Grandee tied up with crime. He blew his top and went around trying to have people fired—”
“Not Tad Belanger, I hope?”
“No. Me, for one. But I pointed out that he himself sent me over to you and told me to play ball. Anyway, he cooled off after a while—I guess he thought it over and decided he might as well relax and enjoy it. He even tacked up copies of your posters in the lobby, making out like the hotel was solidly behind you.”
“The man amazes me.” Miss Withers thanked him, and hung up. “Dear me, we seem to be reaping the whirlwind,” she remarked to Jeeps, who was busily trying to braid Talley’s topknot.
“Isn’t that nice?” murmured the girl absently.
“Look here, young woman! Your own business is your own business, but you can’t go on like this. Why don’t you have a talk with Tad and ask him straight out how he really acquired that new car?”
“Oh, no. I couldn’t!”
“Afraid of what he might tell you?”
“Afraid of what he won’t. I don’t want any more lies.”
“If it comes down to that, what about your own efforts in that direction? Gigi the French maid, and then your story about being a radio actress from Hollywood trying to get Mrs. Goggins married off for the sake of the program, and—”
“That was different!”
“Of course, child.” The schoolteacher sat down beside her. “Listen, you’re not suspecting Tad of being Mr. Nemo, are you? He is attractive, perhaps even to older women. But if he was the bellboy who brought up the cocktails for Harriet Bascom shortly before she died, then he couldn’t have very well been the date she was expecting.”
“We only have his word for most of that, and the five-dollar tip and everything. Oh, I know it sounds crazy, but I’m all confused. I can’t see Tad being mixed up in murder, but I suppose every killer since time began has had a wife or sweetheart or mother who couldn’t believe he was capable of it. What happened to me was I went and fell head over heels in love with somebody I didn’t know, like a dope.”
“From hearsay, that’s the way it usually occurs, I think.”
“But it does boil down to this. Tad spends more money than he could possibly make on his job, taking me to dinner and places in the evening when he’s not working, and he does have that new car—”
“I’d still ask him about it, if I were you.”
“Suppose he didn’t do it, but he knows something? That might explain a lot of things, but I’d just as soon have him a murderer as a blackmailer!” Sobbing, the girl suddenly turned and ran out of the room.
“Dear, dear,” said Miss Withers. “Now I have another reason why this case must be wound up in a hurry.” She was suddenly tired of waiting for things to happen. This cat at a mousehole stuff might be all right, but—
Jeeps had said that there was a man hanging about outside. That at least was something tangible to fight. Grabbing up her coat and a hat which Jeeps secretly thought must have been designed by somebody who had heard of hats but never actually seen one, the schoolteacher went dashing out of the place.
The man who leaned casually against a railing across the street wasn’t anyone she had ever seen before. Just a youngish man in glasses, reading a newspaper. He looked up at her as she marched straight at him.
“Young man, have you the correct time?”
He looked at his wrist. “Four-seventeen.”
“Thank you. Then you’ve been standing here for at least seven hours and a half. Looking for somebody, or just lost?”
“I like it here,” he said calmly.
Somewhat at a loss, the schoolteacher hesitated and then walked on. There were times when she wished she were a man for about five minutes. Halfway to the corner, she thought of a devastating comeback and whirled around. But the man in the gray coat had put his paper away and was walking off in the other direction. She quickened her pace, but he kept effortlessly ahead of her. Afraid of me, is he? she said to herself. She kept doggedly after him all the way over to the subway, and then suddenly he was gone.
She sighed and decided that now she was out she might as well pick up some groceries and the late afternoon papers. Returning home at last, she received one of the major shocks of her life, for the door was barred and bolted against her, and she had to hammer on it and identify herself before Jeeps would let her in. The girl’s face was white as a sheet as she dragged away the heavy chair which had been her barricade.
“What now, for heaven’s sake?”
The man from the kennels had come and tried to take Talleyrand away, by forcible means at the end. But the poodle had squirmed out of his grasp and prudently retired to his lair under Miss Withers’s bed, refusing to come out. T
he man had finally left, but he promised Jeeps that he would be back later. “He can’t take away our precious old Talley, can he?”
The schoolteacher couldn’t understand it. “But originally he was so anxious to get rid of the dog that he just dumped it here, and now—What did he have to say?”
“Nothing much. Except that he had a letter from Ethel Brinker.”
The universe collapsed beneath Miss Withers’s feet. She felt suddenly dizzy, and cold at the toes and fingers. She didn’t, she couldn’t believe it. Not even when the wizened, smelly man who ran the Elysian Fields Doghaven returned half an hour later and waved the letter in her face, as if it were a subpoena he was serving.
The envelope, postmarked early yesterday morning in Santa Barbara, California, bore air mail and special delivery stamps. Inside was a brief note on plain white dime-store paper, typewritten except for the signature. It read:
Dear sir:
As we haven’t got a place of our own yet and my husband doesn’t like dogs, this letter is your authority to dispose of the poodle I left to board with you last November. After board bill and charges are satisfied please hold any money coming to me and my husband who is a traveling man will pick it up on his next trip east.
Yours,
Ethel Brinker Brown RN
“I guess maybe this puts a different light on things, eh?” said Harris, with an odd, knowing look. “She doesn’t say anything about your being her sister and handling her affairs for her.”
“If the letter is really from her—” began the schoolteacher.
He laughed, and reached into the pocket of his leather jacket to bring out a typed pedigree and an American Kennel Club registration form. “She sent these along in the letter.”
Carefully Miss Withers studied the documents, looking for a flaw that she knew had to be there—and wasn’t. The pedigree was attested by the original breeder of the dog, manager of Pillicoc Kennels, whose name also appeared as registrant of the litter. The name Ethel Brinker appeared twice on the registration form, once under Purchaser and again under Signature of person disposing of dog. As far as the schoolteacher could see, it was the same signature as the one at the bottom of the letter, omitting the married name, of course. She realized that Jeeps was watching her hopefully, fingers crossed, waiting for a minor miracle. But the magic refused to come.
“Well, ma’am,” said Mr. Harris. “If you’re completely satisfied, I’ll just take the tyke and be off.”
“But I thought you were so anxious to get rid of Talleyrand when you had him!”
“Oh, that was because he was always getting out and running away. Regular escape artist, he is. But now I have his papers, I can get a good price for him. Poodles are coming back into popularity now that they’ve stopped clipping them to look like ornamental shrubs.”
“How much, then?” demanded Miss Withers.
“Oh, two or three hundred, maybe more for a fine fullgrown male like this one. He’s a son of Pillicoc Palatine, and there’s eight champions in his blood line.”
“But nobody would want an awful old dog like him!” Jeeps burst in. “He raids the icebox and steals steak and chews up suitcases. And he scavenges for old chewing gum and almost knocks people down—”
“I’ll train those puppy tricks out of him, with a whip if necessary,” promised Mr. Harris.
Jeeps suddenly turned and disappeared into the bedroom. Ten minutes later, when Miss Withers came searching for her, she found that both girl and dog had vanished into thin air. At last she thought to look out of the window, and there was Jeeps perched on the fire-escape with the poodle in her arms, ready to make a break for it if the worst came to the worst. “You may come back in now,” said the schoolteacher. “He’s gone.”
“But what—how—?”
“I simply pointed out that we had the dog, and that possession is nine points of the law. I reminded him that I too could demand a board bill for the time Talley was here, plus a fee for training him. And no matter what price he could get for the dog, he himself couldn’t keep anything except a commission and the amount of the board bill. So we finally settled it with my writing him a check for fifty dollars.”
“Whoops!” cried Jeeps. “Talley is saved.” She started to giggle. “I wish I could see the face of that Mr. Brown Ethel married when he comes to the kennel for his money and finds there isn’t any.”
“Anyone who would abandon a dog like this one doesn’t deserve any more. I must confess that I sweetened the transaction somewhat from Mr. Harris’s point of view by giving him an additional fifty for letting me keep Ethel Brinker’s letter.”
“As a bribe, you mean? There’s certainly nothing you want in the letter.”
“It’s what isn’t in it that counts.” The schoolteacher hesitated for a moment. “I think,” she said softly, “that the time has come to make a stab in the dark.” She picked up the telephone and dialed. “Long distance? I want to put through a station-to-station call to Santa Barbara, California.”
Jeeps knelt beside her, tense and excited. “You’re not going to try to call all the Browns in the city?”
“Hush, child.” Into the phone: “The number there is Arroyo 184. That’s right.”
There was some delay while the patient, strained voices of the long-lines operators discussed the clearing of circuits, and then: “We are ready with Santa Barbara,” and then a clear, lilting feminine voice said, “Hello—go ahead.”
Miss Withers took a deep breath, and went. “Is Ethel there? Ethel Brinker?”
“Nobody by that name, sorry.”
“Oh, of course. She’d be using her married name. I mean Mrs. Brown, the nurse.”
“Nobody by that name either. We don’t have any nurses; this is the Santa Barbara Chamber of Commerce.”
“Oh, dear,” murmured the schoolteacher, very deflated. Then she cried suddenly, “Just a minute, don’t hang up. My name is Withers, and I’m associated with the police department. We are trying to trace a call made from this city to your number last August sixteenth. Would you happen to remember anything about it?”
For some time Miss Withers listened, waiting. “Thank you anyway,” she said finally, and replaced the receiver.
“No dice?” begged Jeeps.
“The girl could only remember one long-distance call from New York last summer. It came in early one morning when she was just opening up the office. That checks, allowing for the difference in time zones. It was a woman, too. But there must be a mistake somewhere. Because I can’t for the life of me see why Harriet Bascom should have flung herself on the bed in tears because the climate of Santa Barbara is not suited to commercial grapefruit groves!”
“While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping. … ”
—Edgar Allan Poe
12
THE DAY HAD STARTED WITH Miss Hildegarde Withers getting up on the wrong side of the bed, having been awakened by a tentative shaking of her shoulder, much as a very young puppy might shake a very old rat. “You were thrashing about like crazy, and moaning something about ‘Open Sesame,’” Jeeps explained. “Are you all right?”
“Just that dratted nightmare again! And for the life of me I couldn’t think of the magic words that always wake me up. Talley and I were being chased by mad dogs, and this time one of them was a Chihuahua. I do wish my subconscious wouldn’t try to be morbid and funny at the same time.”
Even after two cups of strong black coffee and completion of the normal everyday household chores she still could not completely dispel the phantoms. But time was marching on, and if ever the iron was hot, it was now. She picked up the phone and finally was connected with Mr. Brady of the Grandee. “This is Miss Withers—”
“Oh!” he answered, in the tone that he might have used had she said that Lucrezia Borgia was calling.
“About that telephone number,” she continued. “Arroyo 184. Are you sure you didn’t make a mistake?”
“Yes,” he said, in the tone o
f one who never made a mistake and doesn’t expect to.
“Well, do you suppose I could just have a peek at that telephone bill?”
If the schoolteacher had expected him to hesitate, she was disappointed. “Certainly. It’s here on my desk. And I have some other data which might interest you, though I’d rather not discuss it over the phone.”
“Be there in ten minutes,” she cried, and hung up. Talleyrand put on his usual act with the leash while she was donning coat and overshoes, but she hardened her heart. “Don’t you remember, you were banished forever from the Hotel Grandee for being too friendly with the guests?” Of course, she herself had almost the same thing happen to her. But everything was different now. She and Mr. Brady were allies, or at least co-belligerents.
As she came out into the street Miss Withers took a quick look across the way, but nobody was lurking there behind a newspaper. Farther down the block a youth with a vacuum cleaner under his arm was ringing doorbells and a thickset man leaned over a small maroon coupé, but he seemed oblivious to her stare and to everything except the windshield he was scraping. Finally Miss Withers went on to the park corner and hailed a cruising taxi, serene in the knowledge that she could put it down on the expense account she was keeping.
The doorman at the Grandee helped her out and then did a double-take. “Good morning, Mr. Muller. How’s the eyesight today?” and she bustled on inside, leaving him staring blankly after her. The lobby was bustling like a disturbed anthill—she had never seen it otherwise—and she noted with some satisfaction that a little group of people was clustered around the bulletin board near the bell-captain’s desk, craning their necks at her handiwork. Those placards, she thought grimly, might be the only memorial that the four missing women would ever have.
She walked across the lobby, tingling at the thought that almost any one of the sleek, well-dressed men who went hurrying by might be Mr. Nemo himself, no doubt greenish-gray with worry behind the complacent mask she meant to strip away any day now, any moment.
Four Lost Ladies (The Hildegarde Withers Mysteries) Page 15