by Helen Reilly
Rose took an unceremonious leave of Candy’s two husbands. She couldn’t free herself from the crouching dread. It was poised behind every shining bush, every thicket. She found herself running up the steps to the long awninged terrace of the lounge, her shoulders hunched, coldness between them. She dropped into a chair and lit a cigarette.
The atmosphere of the lodge wasn’t much of an improvement on the out-of-doors. The Beldings were busy packing, one of Rose’s difficulties was trying to decide how to act, comport herself with them. Her worry was needless. She didn’t have to do anything. They were just the same as they had always been in their surface contacts, except that Gertrude was quieter, less ebullient in the shadow that lay over the household, the shadow of a complete change of venue, of nothing where there had been everything.
There was some balm in Gilead. Later on in the afternoon, after a sandwich and coffee that the houseman brought down from the Chalet, one of Rose’s greatest anxieties was relieved. Elizabeth wasn’t going to be homeless, friendless, penniless. She was going to marry Hugh Eden. Eden told her first, throwing his ordinary reserve to the winds. He was like a boy in his happiness.
“She wouldn’t listen in the beginning, Rose, but she did. She did. I made her—and finally she gave in.”
He couldn’t sit still, kept jumping up and walking around. He was full of plans. He didn’t have much but there would be enough, he had saved something, and he was due for retirement in two or three years. “I’ll make her happy. I swear I will . . .”
He took Harry Belding in stride. Anything Elizabeth did was all right with him. “Poor girl ... it was a bad business, but I’ll make it up to her—at least I'll try."
Elizabeth's transports were less vehement, she was still very tired, but she was quietly content. “I’m very fond of Hugh, Rose, and he's waited so long and so patiently. I couldn't marry him before. There was always the thought of the money, whether it was that . . . oh. I know that I was unjust, and I’m ashamed of myself, but the thought was there—and it always would have been there, it would never have left me. And Hugh knew it, knew how I felt, that it was keeping us apart, but in spite of that, for my sake, he urged me not to speak."
The package Rose had brought her from New York was on the table beside the bed. She undid it. The leather box inside was worn. It held a pair of diamond earrings for pierced ears. The settings of gold were heavy and old-fashioned, the central stones, rimmed by tiny diamonds, were valuable.
“My dot,” Elizabeth said smiling. “It’s all I have to bring Hugh. It’s lovely to know he doesn’t care. . . . They were my mother's. I had intended to live on them for a while, until I got my feet under me."
Gertrude Belding came into the bedroom with tea. She said dully, “It’s not drugged, you drink it, it will do you good," and Elizabeth patted her hand. Nothing in their relationship had changed. The open revelation of last night hadn't altered a situation they had lived with for years. Gertrude said that Harry was down in Field seeing about tickets. Fie was having a hard time getting space. After that he was going over to Mrs. Pilgrim. The plan was that they were all, Elizabeth, Eden, the Beldings, Nils and Rose, to return to New York together.
Nils? Rose thought. She had only seen him for a moment in the middle of the morning when he came to ask how Elizabeth was. He left immediately. For all she knew he might already have gone. He hadn’t gone. He drove back from Field with Harry Belding. Harry went to the big desk and got a brief case. He was going over to Loretta. He was calm, as always, and competent and able to cope. He had lost a job in a million the night before, would have to start all over again at thirty-eight—but then the blow wasn’t unexpected and he probably had some money put by. He paused at the door, said with a grimace, “Well, off to the execution,” and went out leaving Nils and Rose alone in the big shadowy room.
Nils mixed a Scotch and water and came over and threw himself into a chair on the other side of the hearth. He looked moody and depressed. He took a long drink, lit a cigarette and asked, his eyes on his glass, “Have you remembered any more about that afternoon in the Questing house in New York?”
Rose shook her head. “There is something ... it has something to do with the train, the Commonwealth—but I can’t get at it.” Silence for a moment. It was heavy, irksome. Nils spoke again. “Have a nice talk with Font this morning?”
That put her teeth on edge. Nils must have been watching her. What a nerve he had after the way he’d been draping himself around Candy, engrossed in her, giving her all his attention, gazing into her eyes, making her laugh, laughing himself at their private fun.
She said, “Very nice, thanks. If we’re leaving here tomorrow I’d better go and start packing—”
“You’re not leaving here tomorrow. No one is.”
She had been wondering where the little detective was. Nils told her. He had been in a long conference with Constable Duvette and the inspector for the district. The inspector was in a state. He wanted more action, wanted Davidson’s stolen haul of jewels found, above all he wanted the murderer. The heat was going to be on in earnest, everybody was going to be questioned and requestioned, no one was going to be permitted to leave without a clean bill of health.
Rose stared into the fire. Getting away had been the one glimpse of blue sky, it had sustained her all day. The knowledge that they weren’t going to get away, that they were going to have to stay cooped up here, was intolerable. . . . the police were stupid. They didn’t know who the murderer was, and at any moment another blow might be struck. . . . All at once it didn’t seem possible to keep on putting up a front, to stay cool and collected and pretend to go through the proper motions when she was quite simply sick with terror. The heart of it was the now knowing who. . . . She got up, began to shake, and caught at the mantel.
Nils jumped out of his chair. He was holding her hands, his arm was around her. “Rose, don’t . . . Rose.”
She tried to control the long shudders running through her body. I’ve got to know, she thought, for my own sanity I’ve got to find out. Nils, even Nils—how could you he certain about anyone? You couldn’t. . . . There was someone coining.
Rose released herself and sat down again. "I'm sorry, Nils. Give me a cigarette. It’s just—it's so damn long.
He nodded. "I know, Rose,” he said gentlv. "Come on. Don't worry so, smile.” He coaxed her, the old familiar note in his voice and her mood lightened for just a moment. Then grayness was clown over her again.
It was Gertrude Belding who came wandering into the room. She went about turning on the lamps and asked about dinner. Did they want to dine at the Chalet or did they want dinner sent clown, or what? She didn’t get any answer. Harry Belding returned minus the brief case, and with his head.
He came in slowly, moved towards the fire. He stopped only at the hearth because he couldn’t go any farther. Gazing down into the flames he said reflectively, “I can’t get over it.”
Rose looked at him, this well set up, pleasant, personable man in his late thirties in whom Elizabeth had once seen a deliverer, a knight in shining armor. She thought bleakly that there were a lot of things people couldn’t get over, and did. Loretta Pilgrim hadn’t been able to get over her horror and disgust at Elizabeth’s having married Harry Belding. What an abrupt right about face, what a very abrupt right about face.
Harry Belding’s head hadn’t been chopped off. It wasn’t going to be. He and Gertrude weren’t going to be thrown out on their necks. They were safe in harbor. Their jobs were secure. Loretta Pilgrim had asked them to stay on with her in the same capacity and at the same salary Elizabeth had given them.
Todhunter came in unobtrusively as Harry Belding started to talk. He listened, his eyes down to conceal what was in them. A thread pulled out here, another there, the underlying pattern was beginning to show. Later on that same night and some 4,000 miles away, it took on an even more definite shape. The woman who had been killed in the courtyard of Elizabeth Questing’s house on Murray H
ill was at last identified. She was identified unwittingly, through the agency of Arturo Bimini, the man with whom Madame Flavelle had lived as her husband in New York and to whom she had written on the night before she was strangled.
SEVENTEEN
Arturo Bimini lay sprawled on the day bed face down. The sound of his heavy choking sobs filled the small box-like room. The night was stifling. McKee stood at the single window, his back turned. Across the street the red neon sign on the tavern flashed on and off casting red reflections in the sultry darkness. Sweat dripped from the Scotsman’s forehead, ran down his face. He stood immobile, staring at the dark oblongs above the tavern that were the windows of what had been Gilbert Davidson’s hole-out, to which he had probably referred as his pied-a-terre . . . Gilbert Davidson, deceased with a bullet.
Behind him on the day bed Bimini howled like an animal in pain and pounded mattress and pillows with his fists in his agony. Whatever else the poor devil had done he had loved Madame Flavelle, also suddenly deceased, with a noose, before the waters of a lake in British Columbia closed over her lifeless body.
Beside the door of the room Carter, from McKee’s own squad, stared into his hat. He had removed it solemnly when the inspector broke the news to the man on the day bed.
Bimini had been frightened and truculent when they came in. The announcement that his Maria was dead had blown him to bits. There was no fight left in him. Presently, his first spasm of grief exhausted, he was sitting up and staring ahead of him with empty, red-rimmed eyes.
The letter Madame had written him was lying on the red and white checked cloth covering the table in the middle of the floor. It was a disappointment. She had been too clever a woman to put anything incriminating on paper. Endearments, and triumph. I know where what we want is . . . there are others after them I think, so I use the caution ... if they are not in this place, they are in that. . . . Tonight I move . . . tomorrow, my pigeon, I return, and then you will see . . .
McKee began to question Bimini. It was taking candy from a baby. The man’s spirit was broken. Madame had been the stronger half of the combine by a mile. Arturo Bimini, a dark heavy-set handsome fellow in his thirties, was a waiter by profession. lie had been out of town on a roadhouse job in Portchester. Before that lie hadn’t done any work, his kind of work, since January of that year. His story was much what McKee had surmised. On the night the jewels were originally stolen, instead of going out as she was supposed to do, Madame Flavelle had remained in the hotel suite where her mistress entertained Davidson. When the lady was in the proper state, drunk with love and martinis, Davidson had slipped into her dressing room, unlatched a window to make it look as though entry had been from the outside, and calmly dropped the jewels into his pocket. From then on Madame Flavelle and Bimini had watched him ceaselessly. Madame had generally taken the day shift, Bimini the night. They were as patient and persistent as cats at a mouse hole. Davidson had placed the stolen gems in a safe-deposit box immediately after his successful theft. On August the tenth, the day before he left New York on that last and fatal trip, he had removed his haul. Bimini had been right behind him all afternoon. He told the same tale Eden had told, of Davidson's sauntering down the Avenue and turning left and into the Font apartment building. He remained in the Font apartment for almost two hours.
“I wait,” Bimini said, taking a long pull at a glass of red wine McKee had poured out for him from a jug under the sink.
Loitering in a New York street for any length of time without attracting attention could be difficult. “Where did you wait?” McKee asked.
Just beyond the Font apartment there was a little alley with four small houses on it. Bimini had remained in the mouth of this alley. The whole cross street from Lexington to Third had been visible to him.
The Scotsman showed him glossy prints of the entire cast of characters under scrutiny; Loretta Pilgrim, Candy and Daniel Font, Hugh Eden, George Langley and the Beldings. Some of the prints were copies of pictures gathered from domiciles in New York, some of them were snapshots that Constable Duvette had taken and that had been sent on air mail special delivery by Todhunter from Amethyst Lake.
“Did you see any of these people going in and out of the building the Font apartment is in that day, Bimini?”
McKee didn’t hope for much; he got what he expected. Bimini looked, frowned, said yes, said no, said he didn’t know, he couldn’t be sure of any of them. People were constantly passing up and down the street, going in and out of other houses, getting into cars lining the curbs.
McKee took out another photograph. It was tinted. The only things about the dead woman killed in the Questing courtyard that had remained constant after that savage battering were her clothes, her figure, and her hair. There was just a chance—
Bimini examined the colored print, and shook his head. He started to hand it back, and concentrated on it again. The dress the woman wore was green, a green and white print that brought out green lights in the brassy hair.
Bimini’s face changed. The heavy-lidded handsome eyes opened a little. He nodded.
“Yes, I see her. She’s the one—the dress she fly out when she ran. You want the man who killed Maria ... I want him too. I tell you.”
The woman in the green dress had come walking up the street from Third Avenue at—Bimini calculated time—at maybe fifteen or twenty minutes past five. He had looked at the woman in the green dress idly as she came, she had a neat figure. When she was a little past the alley, on the other side of the street, the woman stood still “like someone shot her.” She was staring ahead of her along the pavement in the direction of Lexington Avenue. There were people there. The woman evidently recognized someone she knew. She gave a great screech, and ran on to the corner of Lexington and around the corner and north in the direction of Thirty-third Street.
Bimini said, “When she started to run— Wait. I will show you, Inspector.”
He lurched up off the couch, went to a table on the far side of the room and opened a drawer in it. He took out a woman’s purse. It was a cheap purse of tan straw. He handed it to McKee. He said, “After she ran away I went over and picked this up out of the gutter where she dropped it when she yells. She didn’t come back. There wasn’t much money in it . . .”
McKee let the money ride. He opened the purse. A couple of tissues, a house key, four pennies, a half a pack of stale cigarettes, a box of matches, a lipstick, a cheap compact, and a letter, just the envelope. with figures scribbled on the back. The envelope was addressed to Mrs. Ha/el Hauer. The address was 2486 Morris Avenue, Jersey City.
There was a coin box in the lower half. McKee sent Carter to call Centre Street. There was no phone listed for Mrs. Hazel Hauer in Jersey City. Carter rang the police there. Twenty minutes later both homicide officials were shooting through the tunnel in the long black Cadillac.
2486 Morris Avenue was a two family house on the outskirts of the city. The door was opened to the inspector and Carter by a stout middle-aged woman in a cotton kimono thrown hastily over a slip. She said, “I’m sorry, but it’s so hot. Yes?”
McKee said, “Mrs. Hauer?”
The woman shook her head and patted a damp permanent. “I’m Mrs. Lindstrom. Mrs. Hauer’s away. She’s been gone a week. I been expecting to hear from her but I ain’t. Huddy's kind of anxious—he’s crazy about his Ma, but I say it’s too early, you can’t depend on the mails, and Maine’s a long way. All them woods, too. Hut she’s on the beach. I’m taking care of Huddy while she’s away. . . . What did you want to see her about?”
McKee produced his credentials. Mrs. Lindstrom was frightened. He said no, they didn’t think Mrs. Hauer had done anything wrong, they simply wanted to ask her a few questions. “Perhaps you can answer some of them, Mrs. Lindstrom.”
Mrs. Lindstrom led the way into the living room of the ground-floor apartment. Mrs. Hauer and the boy lived upstairs when Mrs. Hauer was home. McKee produced the photograph of the woman killed in the Questing courtyard. The face
was unrecognizable. Mrs. Lindstroni gasped and shook her head. “No,” she said, “that can’t be Hazel, it’s maybe a little like, but it’s not her. I guess maybe the dress made you think so, but you see that model all over.”
She said that Hazel Hauer had gone to work as a waitress until after Labor Day at the same place she had worked last year. She left on the morning of August the tenth, at 9 o’clock. Her train didn’t go until the afternoon but she had some shopping to do. “The wages ain’t good up there, but the tips is good, and one of the girls got sick so they wrote to her.”
The name of the hotel? It was the Lorelei, at Breezeport, Maine.
Carter got up and went out to find a drugstore and a phone. While he was gone Mrs. Lindstrom chatted.
Hazel Bauer was a widow in her middle thirties with one son, a boy of fourteen. She owned the house, it had been left to her by her mother, Mrs. Cramer, who had lived with her until her death a year ago. She had been a bossy old party, very stiff and proud, and poor Hazel had been under her thumb. The family had come to Jersey City about ten years ago and bought the house, Mrs. Lindstrom wasn’t sure but she thought they had come from New York. Mrs. Lindstrom had been their tenant for five years. . . . She went on talking until the bell rang.
It was Carter. McKee looked at him. Carter shook his head. Mrs. Bauer had never turned up at the Lorelei in Breezeport, Maine, and the manager was irate, she had sent neither explanation nor excuse.
When the two men left Jersey City an hour later, they had Hazel Bauer’s fingerprints picked up in the bedroom she had used a week earlier, before she set off for New York and the State of Maine Express.
The fingerprints matched. Hazel Bauer was the woman who had been battered to death in the Questing courtyard.
According to Mrs. Lindstrom, and several neighbors, Hazel Bauer, aged thirty-five, had no enemies. She had been a hard-working respectable woman, with only one peculiarity. After her mother's death she had started to drink. Not often, but every once in a while, she would disappear for a couple of days. Mrs. Lindstrom said, “I been used to taking care of Buddy when she was at work, I got two of my own, and she’d always give me notice. She’d say, ‘I’ve got to go away for a day or so, Mrs. Lindstrom,’ and tell me what to give Buddy and to watch his stomach. Then she’d come back looking pretty bad but she’d straighten out and go on all right for another three or four months. She wasn’t a talker. Like her mother she kept her business to herself, but you could tell when one of the wandering fits was coming on by the look in her eye.”