“What’s going on here?” he demanded. “You were employed, young woman, to wait tables, not to weep on the guests’ shoulders.”
The girl gave him a terrified glance and then scuttled away toward the kitchen. “You needn’t have scared her to death,” I remarked tartly.
He looked me over as if he wished he dared say exactly what he was thinking of me. I shrugged my shoulders. There had never been any love lost between me and Sophie Scott’s new husband, but he knew better than to go too far. I occupy one of the most expensive suites in the house, I pay my bills promptly on the first of every month and, because my family was once prominent, I lend a certain social éclat to the Richelieu which it would regret to lose.
“I was merely trying to prevent your being annoyed, Miss Adams,” he said stiffly. “The first thing a well-trained waitress has to learn is not to use the guests for her ‘True Confessions.’ I assure you, it shan’t happen again.”
He moved rapidly away toward the kitchen, to give that poor child a curtain lecture, I felt sure, staring after his dapper back which was as stiff as a ramrod. He was fifteen years younger than Sophie, but he was not a young man. Somewhere in his middle forties, I should say, and not bad looking in a thin, dark, secretive fashion. That had been my objection to him when he first came.
He talked a great deal about where he had lived and what he had done and this and that. It was only when you were away from him that you realized how few grains of actual information you had gathered from the chaff of Cyril Fancher’s conversation.
He said so little to which he could be pinned down. He was born and reared somewhere in the East. He had been engaged in some kind of business connected with selling stocks and bonds.
He had been married, and his wife had died some years ago. He had come South because of his health. It was not apparent precisely what ailed him, though he spoke of asthma and sinusitis. He set his cap to marry Sophie from the beginning, and there was nothing vague in his courtship. He went about it like a high-powered salesman in a whirlwind campaign.
In my opinion, nothing about the man, including his name, rang true. I warned Sophie that he was an artful dodger if ever I saw one, and of course she told him. I said among other things that he was marrying her for a soft berth in which to lie up the rest of his life. I even came out plainly and told Sophie that, while she was a good businesswoman, she was fat and grey and on to sixty. I believe I went so far as to say that no man would look at her except for her income.
Naturally Mr Cyril Fancher did not feel kindly in my direction, and Sophie herself had been cool to me since her marriage. I suppose every time she looked at me they rankled, the things I had said for her own good. She went to great pains to tell me at every opportunity how happy dear Cyril made her. She said she had never known what happiness was till he came into her life.
My only response was “Humph!” which did not improve matters.
I had known Sophie’s first husband, the man who built the Richelieu, and I wouldn’t have given a hair of Tom Scott’s toupee for a thousand Cyril Fanchers. I felt positive that Tom turned over in his grave every time Sophie looked into Cyril’s romantic dark eyes and murmured, “Dearest Lover.”
The girl Annie came back from the kitchen with my lunch upon a tray. She was inept, and I could see that she was still close to tears, although she said nothing and neither did I. To do so was to bring down upon her head more vials of wrath from Cyril Fancher, and I had no desire to aggravate the child’s troubles. Pretty young girls who earn their living as waitresses have enough problems of their own. It did not surprise me that they were constantly shifting from one place of employment to another, though it was generally out of the frying pan into the fire, so far as I could judge.
People were straggling into the dining room as I sat there. There were always fewer for lunch at the hotel than for dinner. Mary Lawson, looking careworn, nodded as she passed my table, but she did not stop for our usual chat. I pursed my lips. Mary had long been a favourite of mine, a widow, still comely, in her late thirties and, as I had every reason to believe, comfortably well to do.
I thought I knew why Mary was going to obvious trouble to avoid me. She did not want to discuss her young niece with me or with anyone else. She had ordered her lunch before Polly came bounding in, a little breathless and talking very fast to cover up the fact that her tongue was a trifle thick and her eyes slightly bloodshot, pulling out her chair with a hand which I could see was far from steady.
“So sorry,” she cried. “Meant to be here on the dot. Don’t know where time goes.”
Mary sighed, and I saw her glance quickly at Howard Warren and then as quickly away. Howard stared straight before him.
If he was aware of Polly’s entrance, he gave no sign, nor did she acknowledge his presence, although there had been a time after Polly first came to live at the Richelieu when she and Howard had hardly been able to step without each other.
They were, in fact, never apart except during banking and sleeping hours. From his mother Howard had inherited a handsome block of stock in our First National Bank. As soon as he finished Harvard, with honours I should add, he began to work at the First National. He is a clean-cut, well-bred young chap, blond, and highly dependable. At twenty-five he was well on his way to becoming one of the pillars of the community.
I for one did not blame Howard for having, during the past three months, broken off with Polly Lawson, nor, I am sure, did Mary, though naturally she was bitterly disappointed. Without being exactly a prig, Howard was the last man who would allow himself to become seriously involved with a girl who, practically overnight, had begun to drink too much and smoke too much and otherwise behave in the most reckless manner.
“It was such a gorgeous morning for golf,” Polly rattled on to Mary, “and Steve’s so fascinating.”
There was an odd silence as if everyone in the dining room was listening for the next word.
“Steve?” echoed Mary in a tight voice.
“Stephen Lansing,” said Polly loudly, for Howard’s benefit, I dare say.
“But, Polly...” protested Mary, turning quite white.
Polly giggled. “Don’t look so shocked, darling.”
Mary was shocked. So was I for that matter, and I saw Howard’s hand clench on the edge of his table.
“I didn’t know you had met Mr-er-Lansing,” said Mary slowly, almost painfully.
Again Polly laughed, a trill of mocking laughter that for some reason hurt my ears. “We haven’t been properly introduced,” she said flippantly. “I’m afraid Mr-er-Lansing picked me up in the lobby. He’s clever about that sort of thing.”
“So I’ve heard,” said Mary, looking a little ill.
So we had all heard and seen with our own eyes. In spite of her recent outrageous behaviour, I had expected better of Polly. After all, she comes of the best stock. Instead of being ashamed, however, she was boasting about something that I for one felt unable to forgive, and a glance at Howard’s set face informed me that I was not alone in my reaction.
Mr Stephen Lansing had at that time been among us off and on for something over three weeks, and from the day he entered the Richelieu he had stirred up one hornet’s nest after another. He was a traveling salesman for a well-known line of cosmetics in Chicago. He travelled in his own car, a flamboyant scarlet model that glittered with chromium gadgets and burst on the vision like a blast of trumpets.
It had twelve cylinders and all the latest streamlined effects. Mr Stephen Lansing was himself streamlined, being very tall and extremely broad shouldered and almost fantastically narrow as to waist and hips. He had blue-black hair and very white teeth which he showed at every opportunity in an impudent smile. His lazy, insolent grey eyes possessed what in my day was called plenty of come hither, the something people now refer to as sex appeal, I believe.
At any rate, Mr Stephen Lansing was undoubtedly what is known as a ladies’ man. He had only to walk through the lobby to make every wo
man there stare after him, a fact which was no secret to the gentleman. He knew perfectly well that he unsettled the feminine pulse. It seemed to be his chief stock in trade. What time he was not rushing off to various small towns in the vicinity to demonstrate cosmetics, he made his headquarters at the Richelieu and occupied himself by making a fool of every female who gave him an opening.
His specialty apparently was to pick up a woman on one pretext or another, rush her madly for a day or so, and then drop her slap-bang while he dashed on to his next conquest. We of the old guard had derived considerable diversion from observing the course of Mr Lansing’s hectic flirtations, to call them by no worse name. I need not say that none of us had ever spoken to the man.
At that time I never expected to. If anyone had told me then that I should eventually be discovered in the pitch-blackness of the Richelieu basement, clinging about Mr Stephen Lansing’s neck with both arms... However, that comes later.
So long as the gentleman confined his activities to outsiders none of us was disposed to resent the matter. In a hotel there are always a few women who are no better than they should be. Our group simply looks through them when we meet. We may discuss their affairs among ourselves; we seldom even pass the time of day with the person in question.
It is possible for a woman of dubious reputation to live at the Richelieu year in and year out without receiving more than a blank stare from permanent guests like myself. As a rule, however, such people become discouraged much sooner than that. We of the closed circle present too unified a front for them. I have seen more than a few quail and take to flight under our silent treatment.
None of us had cared a great deal when Stephen Lansing took Lottie Mosby for a whirl. She was a silly little piece. It was not her first indiscretion, and everyone knew that her husband was a boor when he was drinking, which he had been doing steadily for some time. Nor had anybody objected to Stephen Lansing’s brief affair with Maude Crain. She was a thin intense brunette who fancied herself the hotel siren. We had all been glad to see her get her comeuppance for once.
But Polly Lawson was something else again. Polly belonged to the inner court. She was, by way of Mary, one of us. For Polly Lawson to allow herself to be picked up by the flashy young man who was at that moment the Sheik of the Richelieu was treason in high places, and none of us could afford to overlook it.
I did not wonder that Mary looked ill. I felt slightly ill myself. I had had a bit of a weakness for Polly, with her flyaway red hair and her sweet, wilful mouth and her green-flecked, gay blue eyes.
I had known she was a little minx, but I had believed there was no harm in her outside of youth and high spirits. Now I was being forced to revise my opinion, and it stung. Howard Warren looked stung also as he rose from the table, leaving his dessert untouched.
He had been quite desperately in love with Polly. I suspected he still was, but he was the type to cut off his right hand if it offended him. He did not once glance in her direction as he strode toward the door, but her shrill mocking laughter pursued him, for I saw him wince. I could have shaken the girl, and I suppose I looked it when I stared at her, because her lips curled and she laughed again, but not before I’d seen her eyes – and they were not mocking; they were full of tears.
It was a stifled exclamation from the next table that distracted my attention. I turned and raised my eyebrows. Lottie Mosby always lunched alone, her husband being employed as a clerk in a large sporting goods house downtown. I had never liked either of the Mosby’s. They were common; no other word will express it.
Of the two, although she was a cheap young flibbertigibbet who went in for sex novels and loud dresses and coarse perfumes, I preferred the wife. At least she did not befuddle what brains she had with liquor. Just now I even felt a little sorry for her. Her small over-rouged face was puckered up as if she were about to cry. Following her glance I perceived that Mr Stephen Lansing was ushering Hilda Anthony into the Coffee Shop.
I have said that women of questionable reputation seldom stayed long at the Richelieu. The Anthony creature was the exception to prove the rule. I understand she once said that it was like running the gauntlet to walk through the lobby of the hotel in front of ‘The Knitting Brigade,’ by which she meant me and my closest friends I have no doubt. Nevertheless, she stayed. Seemingly social snubs ran off her the way an umbrella sheds water.
She had come to town originally for a divorce, attracted by our new state law which requires only a three months’ residence to procure a legal separation. She came from New York where she had been a successful gold digger. She made no secret of the three husbands she had already separated from large alimonies. With all her faults she was appallingly frank. She did not deny that she was thirty, that she blondined her hair, and that her gorgeous figure had been her fortune.
She was a thorough adventuress, as we all recognized from the first and as she made no effort to conceal. I myself heard her say once right out in the lobby that she was out to feather her nest and she did not in the least care how she did it. The only mystery about Hilda Anthony was why, having secured the divorce she came for, she remained in town.
There were no gilded playboys in our little conservative city whom she could pluck. After the fine birds she had bagged, the men she met at the Richelieu were small change. Nor did she make any effort to inveigle them, which was still more surprising, it seemed to me. She was like a buccaneer who had suddenly paused with one foot in mid-air for no adequate reason. One or two of the more charitably disposed had suggested that perhaps she had seen the error of her ways and reformed, but there was no hint of ashes and sackcloth about Hilda Anthony, nor did I think that particular leopard would ever change its spots.
She did look startlingly like a leopard as Stephen Lansing pulled out her chair for her that day, or a lithe, beautiful tigress with a tawny coat and malicious yellow eyes. “You’re too sweet,” she drawled, gazing up at him through her long artificial black eyelashes.
“It’s sweet to be sweet to you,” he murmured caressingly.
It occurred to me they were well matched, those two. I remember thinking he was a little like a beast of prey himself. I shuddered when I thought of frivolous little Polly Lawson in his clutches, and it gave me a feeling of warm satisfaction to recall that I had seen him on three separate occasions attempt to insinuate himself upon Kathleen Adair, only to have her look through him as though he were so much air.
I glanced into the mirror at the side of my table. The Adairs always sat behind me, but I could see them reflected in the glass.
The mother was toying with a dish of lemon pudding. She never ate with any appetite. Like young Howard Warren, the girl had left her dessert untouched. She was looking at Stephen Lansing from under her lashes, and her eyes were wistful, as if the man attracted her against her will, as if she could not keep from watching him.
When he leaned nearer and smiled into Hilda Anthony’s yellow eyes Kathleen caught her breath, and for a moment her face puckered as Lottie Mosby’s had done.
I can’t remember when I have ever felt more irritated. I glared across the room at the man. I am afraid I looked bloodthirsty. The Adair child was too nice to lose her heart to a cheap philanderer, I thought peevishly. To my astounded sense of outrage the young man caught my eye, lifted his glass, and with an impudent smile toasted me silently before he emptied the glass.
“Why-why the insolent young whippersnapper!” I exclaimed weakly.
Across the room Stephen Lansing winked at me.
3
My most intimate friends in the hotel are three widows, acquaintances of long standing. We have a bridge foursome which meets nearly every afternoon, that being one of the few interesting ways in which four elderly and unattached females can kill time. Although I do not approve of gambling we play for a quarter on the corner, merely to add point to the game, as I have explained to the members of my church circle.
I recall that on this day it was Grace Jernigan’s turn to
have us in her room. In fact, as I came out of the Coffee Shop after lunch she was complaining to Pinkney Dodge, the night clerk, because her card table had not been returned since it was borrowed for a lotto party in the parlour.
“I didn’t present it to the hotel, you know,” snapped Grace.
“Yes, Mrs Jernigan,” sighed Pinkney.
“You’ll see to it at once?”
“Yes, Mrs Jernigan,” said Pinkney again.
He caught my eye and made a faint grimace. I suppose in twenty years anyone might grow a little tired of being hounded by the demands of peevish guests off duty and on, though somehow one never thought of Pinkney as having any emotions of his own. He was just somebody who was behind the desk at night to take your calls over the switchboard or hand you your key. I had never known him to obtrude his personality upon the guests, granting he had one - which seemed unlikely. His nickname Pinky was a natural outgrowth from Pinkney, but it suited his weak eyes and pinkish hair. In many ways Pinkney resembled a white rabbit more than anything else, even to the feeble twitching of his long upper lip.
“How’s your mother, Pinky?” I inquired as usual.
“The same, thank you, Miss Adelaide,” he said as he always did.
I shrugged my shoulders. I have heard it said that the way to live forever is to get an incurable disease and take good care of it.
For twenty years, that I know of, Pinkney Dodge’s mother had been in a sanatorium out on the edge of town, not expected to last the year out. He did not tell me, because he never discussed his personal affairs, but I heard somewhere that Pinkney had just graduated from law school when his father died.
If so, he had never practiced. I suppose he had to find a paying job in a hurry with a dying mother on his bands. It is quite likely that he believed it would be for only a short time. Nevertheless, he was still at the Richelieu, occupying a tiny back bedroom jammed up against the roof with meals free and enough of a salary to pay the sanatorium bills but not much more.
Murder a la Richelieu (American Queens of Crime Book 2) Page 2