Death of a Doll

by Hilda Lawrence

  “Sure we’ll talk,” Mrs Cashman said. “If Kloppel says so, we will. I own my house and he owns his and all his friends are mine. What do you want to know?”

  He told her in a whisper, hoping to coax her voice to the level of his, but the poor woman had been born that way. Her sobbing tones filled the street and in any other neighbourhood would have brought heads to windows.

  “This is the very dog,” Mrs Cashman caterwauled, inching the animal forward with a tiny, immaculate shoe. “It was raining pitchforks but Brother and I take our walk regardless. We’re like the postman, neither snow nor rain nor heat, you know that piece on the Post Office wall. And we wanted a bottle of ale before the delicatessen closed. Well, around the corner by Hope House, Brother got away and I thought he was after garbage. Big garbage at Hope House on account of so many eating, and he sometimes finds a bone. Well, sir—say, you never told me your name and that’s not fair.”

  “Mark East. And I only want to know if the Miss Miller who died is the same Miss Miller a friend of mine used to know.”

  Mrs Cashman was not confused. “For your friend’s sake I hope not,” she said. “I didn’t see her face because she had that mask on but I’m told it was pulp. Mr East, I like to died. There was this bundle of rags I thought it was, lying in a puddle, and there was Brother acting up. I might have known he didn’t have no bone. So I got down to look. Terrible, huh? You should have heard me scream. And poor Brother let himself go. He’s only a dog. You should have been there. Must have been close to one hundred present, and somebody started a rumour about the condition I was in and I heard it and I know who said it and I fixed her. Well, the poor girl was dead all right.”

  “You’re a very brave woman, Mrs Cashman,” Mark whispered.

  “Why, thanks!” Mrs Cashman howled. “You’d be too, there’s really nothing to it. Do you think it was your friend’s friend?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t much to go on, but when I heard that a girl named—”

  “Ruth Miller. She wasn’t very popular; you’ll have to excuse that, but truth’s truth. While I was waiting for the police—I had to wait, I know the law—I was talking to one of the Hope House girls. She was the first to reach the scene, after me. And we kept each other company. Well, she didn’t know who it was on account of the mask, and she kept saying to herself, ‘It’s nobody I know, it’s nobody I know,’ like that. Then everybody else came and they had a terrible time deciding who it was. Awful, huh? And Kloppel cut the mask off and still they didn’t know. But they found out somehow when the police got there, they’ve got ways of telling, and that’s when I heard the talk. No, she wasn’t popular. She was mental, poor soul, and didn’t care to live. I’m sorry for you and your friend.” Mrs Cashman offered a small, immaculate handkerchief.

  He declined it gravely. “I think I must be on the wrong track,” he said. “I’m pretty sure this wasn’t my friend’s friend. But I wonder if you could tell me the name of the girl you talked to, just for the record?”

  “Jewel. Jewel Schwab. She works there. I’d take you around myself but Brother won’t go near the place. We have to go two blocks out of our way to get the ale now. Tell Jewel I said it was all right to talk to you. Any friend of Kloppel’s—”

  He moved off while she was talking, bowing over his shoulder to soften the appearance of bad manners. When he reached the corner he could hear her urging Brother up the steps.

  There was work waiting for him at his office, but he turned into the Hope House block for a final survey. That night at dinner he’d tell Roberta he’d checked every angle and persuade her to forget the whole business. She’s never quite recovered from Mary Cassidy, he decided, and that makes her edgy. Then, to his surprise, he discovered something about himself. He had never quite recovered from Mary Cassidy, either. Even in the bright, winter sunlight she came back to him and made him think of death. Not easeful death. The other kind.

  He had identified many bodies in the past ten years, bodies abandoned to gutters, lying on good beds under linen sheets, waiting on marble slabs for once familiar eyes to look down and remember. The eternal patience of the latter had always hurt. He had taught himself to touch cold cheeks with a steady hand because there was no one else to say good-by, and had sometimes followed the old ones out to Potter’s Field because they had come a longer way and rated company. The old ones were hard to take. Not that the young ones were easy, he told himself, but before that final decision they must have had one crowded, crashing hour of life that still echoed. But the old ones’ hour had been too long ago, with too much time to forget in… He turned his eyes inward and regarded himself. Why don’t you raise canaries, he snarled, and blubber when you crack an egg?

  A few doors from Hope House he slowed down and watched two women descend the steps and get into a waiting cab. Not the hostel type, he decided. Board members, with fancy New York names, looking for dust and waste in the kitchen. They were fairly young, smartly dressed, and something had happened to make them laugh. He didn’t go in until the cab drove off.

  A pale girl came from behind the switchboard and asked his business.

  “Miss Schwab?”

  “She’s out. Do you want to leave a message?”

  “No, thank you, it isn’t that important. I’ve been talking to Mrs Cashman and she mentioned—” He stopped because he recognised the look she gave him. The good-natured curiosity slipped from her face and emptiness took its place. She was remembering to forget.

  “Do you know Mrs Cashman?” he asked.

  “She lives somewhere around here, that’s all I know.” Her eyes flicked over his shoulder, and he turned to see who was behind him. There was no one. An empty elevator stood open, that was all.

  “You’ll have to excuse me,” she went on. “I’m busy. But if you want to leave your name, I’ll see that Jewel gets it.”

  “No name, I’ll call again. That will be all right, won’t it?”

  “Employees are not permitted to receive callers except at stated hours,” she said formally.

  “And what are the stated hours?”

  “Regular times off.” The formality vanished. “I don’t know when Jewel’s off. It changes every day. She’s off now, but I don’t know when she’ll be back. It won’t do you any good to come back, you’d better write.” She was racing, trying to get away from him, ahead of him, out of sight. “Miss Brady has to make rules about employees or nothing would ever get done. And Miss Brady likes to see the people who call, too. She has to make a rule about that in case of—well, trouble. I mean people come in here and talk, I mean Mrs Cashman has no business to—”

  He saw her dismay when she spoke Mrs Cashman’s name. Her mouth opened and closed as if she wanted to take the name back and swallow it.

  “Never mind,” he said easily. “I know how you feel. Mrs Cashman talks too much, doesn’t she?”

  It didn’t work. “I don’t really know her,” the girl said. She stood behind the desk, her hands firmly planted on the blotter. “You’ll have to excuse me,” she said again. The hands on the blotter could have been pushing him out.

  When he went down the steps to the street he told himself that at least one cliché had a firm foundation in fact. Eyes were boring holes in his back. He walked to his office, wondering how far a suicide could demoralise a houseful of women. Pretty far, according to Martin Luther Kloppel, who admitted he was not dumb. Women without men, Kloppel. Men without women, Hemingway. And also East, definitely East. East without Cashman.

  After dinner Nick Sutton limped over to the fireplace and admired the colour of his brandy in the light of the glowing logs. Mark watched him with deep affection. Nick Sutton and Roberta Beacham had come a long way from lemon sodas.

  Roberta knitted thoughtfully in a chair by the fire, and Bessy and Beulah shared a love seat in name only. The atmosphere had a thin coating of felicity that no one in his right mind would touch with a ten-foot pole. It took Mrs Hawks to crack it. She appeared in the doorway
, garnished with jet, and announced her departure for the cinema with the daughter of a hundred earls who, poor thing, had brought herself to accept employment in Bloomingdale’s basement and required a bit of fun.

  “She’s in straits, you might say,” Mrs Hawks said angrily. “When I think of what that girl was born to!”

  When she had gone, Nick spoke dreamily. “One of these days I’m going to throw that woman out of here. She cows Roberta.”

  “No,” Beulah corrected. “Not Mrs Hawks. Ruth Miller.”

  Mark leaned back in his chair. Here we go, he thought. I don’t know why I wonder about anything. She’s done something. Every line in her face says so at the top of its lungs. “Well?” he asked coldly.

  “Tell them what you did, dear,” Bessy said. “All by yourself, too, because I had one of my headaches and couldn’t go with you.”

  Roberta looked from Bessy to Beulah with dawning intelligence. “No!” she implored.

  “Yes,” Mark said. “I don’t know what it is, but yes. They’re carriers, you know, like Typhoid Mary, only they pack a grislier burden. Look at them, if you can bear it. Gentlewomen, they’re called. I wouldn’t be caught dead with either of them, but I will. They’ll wash up on Long Island at three o’clock in the morning in a blizzard.”

  Nick limped over and sat beside his wife. “Tell the old man, he never got beyond Princeton.”

  Beulah gave Nick her warmest leer. “Want to gamble on a sure thing, Nick? It won’t cost you much, just taxi fares and shoe leather. And if you won’t, I will.”

  “I will,” Nick said reverently.

  “Mark,” she asked, “what does miasma mean?”

  “Just what you think it means. Stink.”

  “Well, Hope House does.”

  “I know.”

  “What? You too? When?”

  “Last night and this morning.”

  “Only last night for me,” she said regretfully. “This morning I did the headwork.”

  “If somebody doesn’t say something,” Nick said, “I’ll—”

  “I can’t talk with a dry throat,” Beulah explained.

  “Both of us can’t,” Bessy said.

  When Mrs Hawks returned from her belted pleasure, they were still talking. She made coffee and sandwiches, although such work was beneath her and no one had asked her to stoop, and served them with her own hands. But she couldn’t understand the conversation. They were sitting around the big table with paper and pencils and it sounded like a new game. An American parlour game, having to do with crime, such as the one called “Murder.” But no lights extinguished. The madam was in a rare state, too.

  She lingered at the table and tried to read the writing on Miss Pond’s paper. Miss Pond might give herself the airs of a duchess, but she had a schoolboy’s fist.

  “Mrs Hawks?” The master’s voice. “That will be all, thank you.”

  When she had gone, by the longest route, Nick looked pleased with himself. “That was only a modest warm-up,” he said. “Next time I’ll have her naturalised.” He went on seriously. “Mark, I don’t like what we’ve been talking about. I’m sold on the tragedy and the Hope House nerves, but if the police are satisfied I don’t see—”

  “Cop-lover,” said his wife.

  “I don’t see where we come in,” Nick finished. “But I wish you’d look into this thing quietly, just to shut Roberta up.”

  “I’ve been thinking,” Mark said.

  “So have I,” said Beulah, “but I don’t expect any credit for it. I’ll get my reward in heaven, I always do. But rather than see Roberta grow thinner and whiter day by day, I’ll swallow my pride and go back to Hope House and—”

  “Beulah! You can’t go back to Hope House!” Pond and Cashman, born affinities, coming together and playing with matches. “We haven’t got a thing on those people, unless we count Roberta’s hunch and your own wishful smelling. This calls for walking on little cat feet. We start at Blackman’s, and I do it.”

  Roberta looked as if she saw stars. “Why Blackman’s?”

  “Everybody leaves a trace of his passing, said the poet. Blackman’s personnel department may have some ideas about Miss Miller’s character. They have records. The professional shoppers’ reports for one thing, her time sheet that tells how often she was late and absent and why, her record with the store physician, her personal charge account. Twenty-five percent off for clothing to wear in the store, ten percent for things to wear outside. What did she buy to wear outside? See?”

  “Yes,” Roberta said. “It’s terrible but it’s wonderful.”

  “And they’ll have her references. If what I dig up at Blackman’s disagrees enough with what we read in the papers and heard from Kloppel and Cashman, then we’ll move in.”

  “How?”

  “I’ll present myself to the lady Head and say I’ve been retained by a woman who had arranged to employ Miss Miller as a nurse to her child and who, consequently, wants to know what gives.”

  “And that’s no lie,” Roberta said. “I’d honestly thought of that.”

  “That makes it legal. So I’ll say all that and tell them who you are and your name will open all doors. I’ll have to use your name, do you mind, Nick?”

  “Go ahead. And you’ll have an out if we’re wrong. Hysterical matron, stuff like that.”

  “Right. Now where are we? Blackman’s.”

  “Mr Benz is the floorwalker,” Bessy said. “A young man who would look well on the stage. I don’t mind going along with you and pointing him out. We exchanged glances.”

  “Mr Benz, thank you, and I’ll find him myself. That gives me Benz and I already had Brady. I also have a Jewel Schwab of Hope House, who can be seen by appointment only, and a clerk or something at the Hope House desk.”

  “Miss Plummer,” Beulah said. “Oldish, grey hair, does beautiful handwork.”

  “No. This was a tall girl, pale, spotted face.”

  “Telephone girl. I saw her, too. She scared me.”

  “She’s scared stiff herself. That’s the thing that gets me, the only thing. It’s all out in the open, clean as a whistle on the surface, but the people who lived with Ruth Miller have goose flesh.”

  “You should see my back this minute,” Bessy said.

  Roberta rose quickly. “You show me, Miss Bessy. We’ll all go to bed now and let the men drink themselves into doing something.” Her eyes were ringed with anxiety, but she led her guests from the room like a veteran hostess.

  Nick watched her proudly. “Growing up… Can you iron this out, Mark?”

  “Sure. She won’t like it, though. I’m afraid it’s straight. Unpleasant, but correct in most details.”

  “Fix it up, that’s all I ask. Spend money and so on.” Nick tried to look old and cynical. “I don’t care what you find out, but find something. I bet on a man in the bottom of the basket.”

  “I don’t know,” Mark said carefully. “If she was ill—”

  “But Roberta can spot illness. She fooled around a hospital during the war. She was good, too. You wouldn’t think it to look at her, she’s so damned cute. And she liked this Miller girl. If it was corpuscles or anything like that, Roberta would have counted them through her skin and sent her eggs and cream and stuff. I know Roberta… I’m afraid she’s got something this time.”

  “Want the truth? I’m afraid so, too, but keep it dark. Beulah’s miasma is the McCoy. I stood in the courtyard of that place, and it smelled even there, if you know what I mean. There were some pretty, normal scenes of girls getting ready for bed, but I don’t know. I didn’t feel good.”

  “Like the art guys who see a picture for the first time and know it’s a phony?”

  “Exactly like that. Like your grandfather knows a mine is salted when he meets the guy who owns it. Hope House is salted.”

  Nick poured another drink. “Nightcap. Blackman’s tomorrow?”

  “Yes. I don’t expect much there for all the fancy talking I did, but the word may get
back to Hope House that somebody’s asking questions.”

  Mr Benz had little to add to his previous story but he said that little well. It was easy to see how Bessy had marked him for the stage. He agreed that people like young Mrs Sutton did a great deal of good in the world, and confessed that he, personally, would hate to see anything happen to the capitalistic class. He pinned a mental price tag on Mark’s hand-woven tie, one of a gift dozen from Roberta’s capitalistic father, and led him to the rear elevators.

  “You’ll find the personnel department on the twelfth floor,” he told Mark. “Miss Libby. And may I be kept informed, or is that too much to ask?”

  Mark assured him that nothing was too much, shook hands, and rode up. The twelfth floor had a cafeteria for employees, a glass-covered sun deck for the same, and the personnel office. He crossed the sun deck to reach Miss Libby. Two charwomen, reclining in steamer chairs, stopped heckling each other long enough to speculate about his business.

  “He want a job?”

  “Him? Naw. Can’t you see he’s rolling?… Now like I was telling you, I been offered twenty-five dollars for my hand-painted lamp. That’s the kind of things I got!”

  Miss Libby’s office was designed to put the fear of God in salespeople who had Monday morning hangovers and cash registers that didn’t tally. It was filled with a cold north light, a highly polished desk, and two chairs. One of the latter was occupied by Miss Libby. At first glance she looked too soft for her job, with mild blue eyes and a baby skin; at second glance she still looked soft but there was something about her red hair and her mouth.

  “Sit down, Mr East,” she said promptly. “I’ve got all the time in the world, but I’m afraid you’re wasting yours. Benz had me on the phone and told me what you wanted. What are you trying to do, grab yourself a fee and give us the kind of publicity we don’t need? That Miller case is closed. There’s nothing for you in it.”