by Craig Rice
“I—can’t!” Polly Walker buried her face in her hands. Cleve Callahan said, “Polly—darling!”
“Don’t be goony,” Dinah said. “You can, too. My gosh! Just because your father was a gangster and he’s in a jail some place! I think he must of been a pretty swell guy because of the way he took care of you, and you haven’t anything to be ashamed of except maybe acting like this. So, my gosh, quit bawling.”
“Shush-wow-e-lul-squared,” April said under her breath.
Polly Walker borrowed Cleve’s handkerchief and blew her nose. “She—that Mrs. Sanford—found out about it, somehow. She kept asking me for money. And I don’t make a lot of money. Then I met him—Wallie—at a party. He—well, flattered me—and I found out he was her husband, and I thought—well—maybe—” She blew her nose again. “I didn’t really like him, or anything. Cleve knows that.”
Cleve held her hand tight and said, “We’ve been all over that already. Remember?”
She nodded. “Oh, Cleve, I love you so!”
“Tell him about that on the way to Las Vegas,” April said. “Tell us about Mrs. Sanford.”
“Go on,” Cleve said quietly. “They deserve to know the whole business. After all, if it hadn’t been for them—”
“Well,” she said, “he sort of—well, fell for me. I shouldn’t, have, but I encouraged him. And then— Oh, look, it was like this. I thought, maybe, through him, I could get that stuff—those letters and everything—away from Mrs. Sanford. But he had some ideas of his own. He got—well, matrimonial.”
“I don’t think that’s quite the way to use the word,” Cleve said, “but we understand. Quite understandable, on his part. Anybody who took more than one look at you—”
She began crying all over again, and he found a fresh handkerchief. “It wasn’t like that. It was because I’m a— I’m a promising young actress and I’ll probably make a lot of money some day—I mean I would have made a lot if I hadn’t decided to get married and retire and—Oh, Cleve!” She buried her face on his shoulder.
“Why don’t you just marry Boulder Dam?” April asked him.
Cleve laughed, pushed Polly off his shoulder, wiped off her face, and said, “Go on, baby. Tell all.”
“Well. Well, finally, I told Wally about—the stuff she had about my father. He said he’d get it for me if—if he could get a divorce from her and marry me. Then. Then suddenly she wanted me to come out and see her. I did. She wanted a lot more money. I guess—well, I practically know—he must have just told her—everything. She said, for a lot of money she’d give me those letters and give him a divorce and forget everything. So, I said I’d come out Wednesday and bring the money with me.”
There was a long, long silence. Finally April said, softly, “We’re still listening.”
Suddenly Polly Walker sat up straight, no tears in her eyes, though her face was still very pale, and her lovely hair was tumbling over her forehead. “I went there to frighten her,” she said. “I had a gun. I meant to—make her give me those letters. Then I could forget her and Wally and everything else. I got there—about—oh, I don’t know exactly, but it was between four-thirty and five. I parked my car in the driveway, and I went up to the door. I took out my gun. I wasn’t going to shoot her, but—honest, I couldn’t shoot anybody, not even her. I just wanted to—oh, you know.”
“We know,” Dinah said gently.
“I walked into the living room. I rang the bell first, and nobody answered. The door was unlocked, and I walked right in. I had the gun in my hand. She just looked at me, she didn’t say a word. I pointed the gun at her and said, ‘Mrs. Sanford—’ ”
“And then?” April prompted.
“Then—everything happened so quickly. I hardly know what—there was a man, came out from—I guess it was the stairs. I just remember he was thin and dark. He had on a snap-brim gray felt hat, I remember that much. He swore, and he ran past me, out the door. Mrs. Sanford didn’t even seem to notice him. Then suddenly there was a shot. It came from—the dining-room door. I saw Mrs. Sanford fall. And the gun I was holding—just went off. Not at anything, it just went off. I haven’t any idea what it hit but I know it didn’t hit—her. And I turned and ran. The man in the gray hat was getting in a car parked farther down in the driveway. He drove off, fast. I got in my car and drove, fast. I don’t know where he went. I went down by the ocean, and parked there a few minutes. And I thought. Maybe she—Mrs. Sanford—was just wounded. I ought to go back. I could pretend I’d just arrived there, to have tea with her. So I did drive back. And went up and rang the doorbell, just as if I hadn’t been there before.” She paused, and pushed the hair back from her forehead.
“Rupert, my friend,” April said admiringly, “you’re marrying a woman who has nerve!”
Polly Walker said, “But she wasn’t just wounded. She was murdered. So, I called the police.” She looked at Dinah and April, smiled wanly, and said, “And you can take it from there.”
He leaned forward and said, “Now look, you two About this story—”
April looked at him, wide-eyed. “It’s a family trait. Heredity. Our mother is very absent-minded, and so are we. I’m sorry, but we’ve absolutely forgotten every word she said!”
“As for me,” Dinah said, “I wasn’t even listening.” She kissed Polly Walker on the cheek and said, “Oh, gosh! I’m so darn glad you didn’t murder Mrs. Sanford and that you aren’t going to marry Wally Sanford even if he is a rather nice person, but that you’re going to marry this guy, who, I mean whom, I think is absolutely super!”
“My sister!” April said. “The tactful type!”
“Nun-u-tut-shush!” Dinah said. Tears began to roll down her cheeks.
“Don’t mind her,” April said. “She always cries at weddings. Just the same, I think it’s a dirty trick to go get married in Las Vegas. Because I look Simply Div in organdy. And, anyway, is it legal to take the witness to a murder out of the state even to marry her?”
“I’ll ask my lawyer,” Cleve Callahan said, “when we get back tomorrow.” He looked up and said, suddenly, “Good Lord!”
The Mob was approaching. Most of it, at least. Archie led it, carrying an enormous bunch of hydrangea blossoms. Admiral had an armful of bright purple bougainvillea vine. Goony had a bouquet of his mother’s best dahlias, Flashlight had a handful of petunias, and Slukey had a single, carefully held camellia.
“We coulda done better,” Archie said breathlessly, “but we hadda work awful fast. Here.” He dumped the hydrangea blooms in the car. Slukey handed Polly Walker the camellia, with great solemnity, and the others piled their collection around her.
“I heard you were gonna get married,” Archie explained. “And if you get married you gotta have flowers, so I gave the Mob an emergency call.”
Polly Walker hugged and kissed him. He would have been embarrassed beyond reason, save that she hugged and kissed the rest of the Mob, too. Then Cleve Callahan started the car and backed down the driveway, calling “Good-by,” and Polly Walker started crying all over again.
April beamed at Archie, looked after the roadster, and said, “A swell idea. But unless she turns off Niagara Falls, you’d have done better to have given her about four dozen handkerchiefs!”
The Mob hooted with glee and raced away up the hillside. Dinah and April started up the sidewalk toward home.
“You might have told me,” Dinah said, a trifle miffed.
“I wanted it to be a surprise,” April said. “And it certainly was. As a matter of fact, it was a surprise to me, too.” She scowled, and kicked at a stone on the sidewalk. “Dinah, do you believe Polly Walker’s story?”
“Of course I do” Dinah said. “Every word of it. My gosh—”
“So do I,” April said. “Dinah, I think we’re getting somewhere. The thin, dark man with the gray hat. That was Frankie Riley. He was on the scene of the crime. But he didn’t shoot her. Mrs. Sanford, I mean. Polly Walker was there, and she shot Uncle Herbert’s picture. There
’s a girl who never ought to be trusted with anything deadlier than a slingshot. And someone fired, from the dining room, and hit Mrs. Sanford. Someone with a forty-five, and darned good aim. Dinah, we’ve found out a lot!”
“A lot of nothing,” Dinah said gloomily. “Don’t be so cheerful. Because there’s still things we don’t know about.”
“I’ll be cheerful if I want to,” April said. “And don’t say ‘things,’ because there’s just one Thing.” She beamed maddeningly at Dinah. “All we have to do now is find out who stood in the dining room and shot Mrs. Sanford.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
The three-dollar manicure was a distinct success. So was the hair-do. The three young Carstairs stared rapturously at Mother all through dinner. If Bill Smith could resist that!
“Estelle really did beautifully,” Mother said, in answer to their compliments. “Especially on my nails. I never knew her to take such pains with them before.” She waved them at Dinah and April. “Do you like the color? I never had it before, but she talked me into it.”
April and Dinah nodded vigorously. They did indeed like the color. April and Estelle had picked it out. A soft luscious rose-pink.
“And I thought,” Mother went on, “since I’m taking a little vacation—suppose we three go into town for dinner tomorrow night, and take in a show?”
April and Dinah looked at each other. Was this the time to break the news that Bill Smith was coming to dinner, Dinah’s eyes asked. April shook her head slightly. Dinah’s eyes said, well, do something.
“Oh, Mother,” April said, “that would be super. But—oh golly—look, you’re usually so busy. And it’s so much fun to have an evening at home. Just us four. Honest, I’d a whole lot rather do that, instead.”
“I would too,” Dinah said vehemently.
Archie chimed in with, “Doggone right!”
“Really?” Marian Carstairs said. The three young Carstairs nodded vigorously. “You blessed kids! All right, home it is. And I’ll get a special dinner, to celebrate. What shall it be—steak?”
“I know what I’d rather have,” April said. “One of those wonderful old-fashioned meat loafs. With that thick gravy.”
“And lemon pie,” Dinah said, “with just gobs and gobs of meringue.”
“And biscuits,” Archie said.
Marian Carstairs shook her head and sighed. “My children! I offer them dinner at the Derby, and seats at the best show in town. They want to stay home and play parchesi. I offer them steak, and they settle for meat loaf.”
Dinah giggled. April said, “That’s because we know what’s good!”
“And—” Archie said.
April kicked him, quick, under the table before he could add, “—and what Bill Smith will like.”
“And what?” Mother said.
“And we love you,” Archie finished, with a triumphant smile at his sisters.
“And I’ll do the dishes tonight,” Mother said.
“Not with that manicure,” April told her firmly. “You sit in the parlor and make like a lady and read up on child psychology.”
“You want to know how to raise us properly,” Dinah added.
“Sure,” Archie said. “Hey, y’know what? Hey, Mother, y’know what?”
April tried to catch his eye, but he was looking the other way. And he was clear around on the other side of the table, so that she couldn’t kick him. She rose and began hastily picking up the unused silverware.
“Y’know what Bill Smith said about you?”
Mother looked interested and said, “No. What?”
By that time April had reached Archie. She stuck a warning finger into his back just below his left shoulder blade and said hastily, “Bill Smith said you were a fine, brilliant woman. As if we didn’t know it already. Archie, take out the plates.”
“Try and make me,” Archie said, insulted. He wriggled away.
April grabbed for his hair with her free hand. He tickled her in the ribs, and the silverware dropped to the floor with a loud clatter. Dinah ran around the table to separate them, tripped over Archie’s foot, and the three of them sprawled on the floor.
“Just because you’re bigger’n me!” Archie yelled.
“Archie, you fiend!” April howled. “My new hair-do!”
“Children!” Mother said loudly.
Dinah had hold of Archie by that time, Mother made a dive for April, slipped on a small scatter rug, and sat down hard on the floor. Then the doorbell rang.
There was a sudden and deadly silence. The four Carstairs looked up, aghast. The night was warm, and the front door had been left open during dinner. Bill Smith stood framed in the doorway. There were two men standing out on the front porch.
“I hope we’re not disturbing you,” Bill Smith said.
Dinah was the first to recover herself. “Not at all,” she said politely. She jumped up, helped Mother to her feet, and began patting Mother’s back hair into place.
“We always do exercises after dinner,” April said serenely. “Good for the digestion.”
“Do come in and have coffee,” Dinah said. “Archie, bring in the coffee tray.” She gave him a warning pinch, and he fled.
One of the two men who came into the room with Bill Smith was the quiet man in gray who’d been there the night before. The other was a stranger. Or was he a stranger? There was something uncannily familiar about him. “I just thought you’d like to know,” Bill Smith said, “that your smart daughter Dinah caught a spy.” But he was grinning as he said it. The other two men were grinning, too.
Marian gasped, her eyes wide. “That’s not a spy! That’s Pat Donovan! Pat!” She ran across the floor, hands outstretched.
“Marian!” the smiling brown-eyed man said. He grasped her hands and said, “You’re getting to be a terrible dope in your old age. Imagine not recognizing me, all these weeks!”
Bill Smith broke it up by introducing the gray-clad man from the FBI. By that time Marian looked a little dazed. She stared from one to the other.
“Mother,” April said earnestly. “He is a spy. Dinah caught him.”
“Nonsense,” Marian said vaguely.
“I did too,” Dinah said. “Only he told me he was Peter Desmond and I believed him. But I knew he couldn’t be Peter Desmond after I remembered it was cold and foggy that day, because that’s how we happened to hear the shots.”
“And he paints water,” Archie piped up. “He paints water with oils. April said so.” He put the coffee tray down on the table.
“And if he isn’t Peter Desmond,” April said frantically, “who is Armand von Hoehne?”
The man in gray laughed and said, “Your children are saner than you think, Mrs. Carstairs.”
“They sound saner than I feel,” Marian Carstairs said. She sat down and began pouring coffee automatically. “I do wish somebody would tell me what’s going on.” She added, “I never would have believed Pat Donovan could have fooled me with those fake whiskers.”
“They weren’t false,” Pat Donovan said in a hurt voice. “I grew them.”
Dinah had been bewildered. Now she suspected she was being kidded, and she began to get mad. She stood silently watching and listening. Getting mad, with Dinah, was a slow process, but a thorough one.
“You do know this man, Mrs. Carstairs?” the man in gray said.
“Of course I know him. He worked for a newspaper in Chicago at the same time I worked for another newspaper in Chicago. That was years ago. He was best man at my wedding. And I saw him in Paris, and Madrid, and Berlin, and Shanghai. It’s been years, now, since I saw him, but I’d have known him anywhere.”
“Without the whiskers,” Pat Donovan added.
“You might have told me who you were,” Marian said, “instead of letting me try to talk French to you, and discuss those awful paintings.”
“They weren’t so awful,” Pat Donovan said. “At least, not as awful as your French.”
By now, Dinah was really mad. She rose
and said, “My mother speaks good French. And you, Mr. Donovan, or Desmond, or Desgranges, or Von Hoehne, or whoever you are, you’re a liar!”
“Dinah!” Marian said.
“Hey, Dinah,” Archie said. “Y’know what? Y’know what?”
“Shut up,” Dinah said to Archie. She glared at Pat Donovan and said, “First you lie to me, and then you criticize my mother’s French.”
“Y’know what?” Archie yelped. “Dinah, you listen to me. He couldn’t be Peter Desmond. Y’know why? Account of Peter Desmond is a guy in the Gazette comics. He speaks forty-’leven languages and he can disguise himself any ol’ time he wants to.”
Dinah remembered. “I read the Gazette too,” she said coldly. She was good and mad at herself now, too. Falling for a story like that!
“Dinah,” Pat Donovan said. “I’ll explain it all to you—”
Just in time a line from one of Mother’s books came to her. She stood up very straight and said, “I am not interested in your explanations, Mr. Whatever-your-name-is. I have more important matters to attend to.” She turned on her heel, strode into the dining room, and began picking up the dishes.
“Oh, Dinah,” Marian said. She started after her.
April pulled her down on the sofa. “Remember what the book on child psychology said. Wait till she’s through being mad and then reason with her.” She added, “That always works with Archie and me.”
Marian sighed, and sat down. She knew, from long experience, that April was right. “Well, Pat,” she said, “just explain to me.”
Dinah marched back and forth from the dining room to the kitchen, carrying dirty dishes and telling herself that she was not going to listen to what was being said in the dining room. She didn’t even care. It was impossible, though, not to overhear fragments of conversation. She began carrying off the dishes one at a time.
“—met this Von Hoehne in Paris—”
She put away the salt and pepper cellars.
“—thought there might be a good story—”
She took off the napkins.
“—not much trouble to grow a beard—”