The door opened and Miss Brady entered alone. She was the dark one, all right, and there was nothing institutional about her clothes and poise. And not in Small’s class, although Small was good enough. This one was from another world entirely.
“Let’s get to the point,” Miss Brady said at once. She looked as if she hadn’t laughed for years. “Are you a detective, and if you are, exactly what do you think you’re looking for? And where does Mrs Sutton come into this?”
He told her, and she listened attentively. “You work with girls, Miss Brady,” he added. “You know how their minds behave. Well, it’s even worse with a girl like Mrs Sutton, who is younger than most of your charges and much, much less sophisticated. She was shocked and confused by Miss Miller’s death, and her husband asked me to straighten things out. This is the only way I can do it.” He smiled.
Miss Brady returned a cold stare. “I understand you were here yesterday, asking for Jewel Schwab. And you told the girl on duty that you’d talked to Mrs Cashman. I don’t like that, and I think I’ll have to stop it. And don’t think I can’t. Well?”
It took five minutes of persuasive talk to win her over, and even then he wasn’t confident. “I only want one fact,” he said, “one statement from you that I can use. I don’t care what it is, I don’t even know what it ought to be. But I’ve got to reassure Mrs Sutton. It isn’t all business with me, she’s a very dear friend. She insists that Ruth Miller wouldn’t kill herself. I can’t argue that. But I have wondered why the verdict was suicide instead of accidental death. Of course, I can go to the police, but you don’t want that any more than I do. So you tell me. Why was it? Why didn’t somebody say she fell? Wasn’t that possible?”
Miss Brady was slightly mollified. “I suppose it was possible. But there were other things—her attitude, for instance—”
“That’s it, that’s what I want. Her attitude. I can’t get the girl straight in my mind. Mrs Sutton says she was quiet and kind. Dr Kloppel says she was anti-social and a liar. How well did Kloppel know her?” He knew Kloppel hadn’t known her at all.
Miss Brady coloured. “He probably got that from me. Listen, Mr East, my job here is just about as spiritual as yours. Every year and sometimes twice a year we have trouble about—things disappearing. In a place like this—well, it happens. And I have to keep watch like a jailer.” Miss Brady paused, as if she were collecting facts and putting them in proper sequence. “On the afternoon of the day she died, I met Ruth Miller on the street. She should have been at work, and that in itself was odd enough to make me wonder. But there was something else I liked even less. She was carrying a suitcase. When I asked her what she was doing, she told me a vague story about a doctor’s appointment. I didn’t like the way she looked, and, frankly, I didn’t believe her. So I said I’d go along. At that point she was either unwilling or unable to tell me the doctor’s name. There was only one thing for me to do then and I did it. I brought her back here. I didn’t believe the doctor story and I still don’t, and I was interested in the suitcase. We’ve had the suitcase business before. Full of linen, silver, other girls’ clothes, and jewellery. I tried to watch her during the evening, but you know about the costume party. They all looked alike. And I planned to have a talk with her later that night. I never had a chance. I’ve talked to several girls who think they talked to her, and they all say the same thing—that her behaviour was decidedly peculiar. That’s all.”
“What happened to the suitcase?”
“I opened it, naturally. Nothing but clothing, her own. She was evidently planning to run away. Why, where to, or what have you, I don’t know. I can only guess that she was in a jam of some sort, saw something closing in, and tried to skip.”
“Maybe,” he said, “it actually did close in.”
“Here? In this place? Impossible.” Miss Brady’s strong face was faintly amused.
He tried to look amused, too. “What about Jewel Schwab? I’d like to talk to her. I understand she was the first person from the house to reach the body.”
“She was indeed. That’s our Jewel. Two years ago a man in the next block was knifed by his lady, and Jewel showed up before the blood. No, you can’t talk to her. You can’t talk to anybody. I won’t have that mess all over again. Hysterics, enough to drive you mad. You tell Mrs Sutton I know my rights. If you ask me, Mrs Sutton has too much money and too much time and she ought to go back to school.” Miss Brady stood up and walked to the door. He followed.
“Miss Brady,” he asked finally, “are you and Miss Small satisfied to let things stand as they are?”
“Certainly. As far as we’re concerned, the situation is clear, unfortunate, and finished.” They were in the lobby, and she went directly to the street door and held it open. “Goodnight.” She added, “My compliments to Mrs Sutton.”
He walked to the corner, framing a story for Roberta. Brady is no fool, he told himself. She knows her stuff. But he didn’t want to talk to Roberta at once, he wanted time to rearrange his own ideas and soften Miss Brady’s facts. The next day would be soon enough.
He had the kind of dinner he liked and saw a play, then went home to bed. At two in the morning he was called by a client in Washington who needed him at once for a delicate piece of identification. It was too late to call Roberta, so he wrote her a note and dropped it in the mail chute. At seven he was on a plane.
6
The elderly maid, Agnes, closed Mrs Fister’s door behind her and went to the second-floor closet where the mops and brooms were kept. She hung her dustcloth neatly on a hook and shuffled down the hall to the packroom where she had a little private business of her own.
Agnes often told herself she had the best job in the House. She looked after the public rooms downstairs and the staff rooms. She got tips and gifts of used clothing and was able to pass the latter along to the other maids, which made her feel like a staff member herself. She also got pieces of fruit and candy. Her apron pocket was even then bulging with a pear. From Mrs Fister, who had a plateful on her centre table, just like a real home.
The private business in the packroom had to do with Clara’s low blood pressure and an old sweater that Agnes didn’t need herself. Clara worked in the kitchen, which was always cold. The sweater would help. Agnes glowed with generosity and wrestled with the packroom latch.
The old straw suitcase, in which she kept her odds and ends for giving, was not where it should have been. She always kept it well to the front, but she hadn’t looked at it for more than a month, and now somebody had pushed it to the back. She saw its familiar outlines behind a pile of wicker hampers, canvas telescopes, and hatboxes. She pulled it forward, dislodging a rusty birdcage that had no business there and upsetting hatboxes. Nothing was as it should be. She’d speak to Mrs Fister.
There was something behind the suitcase that looked like a pile of rags. Probably oiled rags, probably explosive, everybody burned to a crisp one of these nights; she’d certainly speak to Mrs Fister. She reached into the dark corner with distaste.
For a long time she knelt on the bare floor looking at what she held in her hand. The black-fringed, empty eyes looked back, the rosebud mouth curled in a crooked smile, the bright wool hair was covered with dust and cobwebs. Now what in the world, she asked herself. Now what in the living world—
She reached into the corner again and found the dress. It was wadded in a ball, and she shook it out, muttering. “Supposed to be turned in with the others to be stored away proper in case of future need, although I doubt if anybody’d want to put one on again.” She upbraided the late wearer. “Not even folded, not even wrapped up, pushed back in the corner like it wasn’t meant to be found. All that stuff piled in front; if it hadn’t been for Clara needing a sweater, it could stay there till spring and I’d never know. I’ll give that one a talking to when I find out who she is, boarder or no boarder.” She smoothed the mask and folded it, and began on the dress. Sleeves turned in, doubled over at the waist, hem—
She carried the dress over to the light. There was a spot on the hem—at least, there had been a spot once. Now there was a blistered, brownish stain that somebody had tried to wash out. Like coffee. Agnes was enraged. “Rank carelessness,” she fumed. “Prancing around with a cup of coffee, acting up, no respect to the Board that’s kind enough to give parties at no additional cost.” She paused. “But they didn’t have coffee, they had punch; and sure’s you’re born that’s coffee. Must have been one of those that keeps food in her room, attracting mice.”
She took the mask and dress to her own room and hid them in the bottom of a drawer. “I’ll fix her,” she told her reflection in the mirror. “I’ll find out and fix her. Not half washed out, either, as if there wasn’t any soap to be had or in too big a hurry to get somewhere else. Somebody from another floor, trying to place the blame—”
She paused and studied her reflection in the mirror. It looked back with strange intensity and told her, without words, that she had paused because her thoughts were uneasy. “Humph!” she said defiantly, tossing her head. “I say that’s coffee and it is coffee.” But she locked the drawer before she left and put the key in her pocket.
At the same hour, in Roberta’s dining room, Beulah neatly chipped the top from her breakfast egg and watched Bessy try to do it, too. Because Bessy had been perfect in rehearsal, the present performance was sheer obstinacy, so she was kicked for it.
“Well I’ll be!” Roberta said.
Wrong leg, Beulah decided. Better act as if I had pins and needles.
“Letter from Mark,” Roberta went on. “He’s gone away, urgent business. And he says we’re to forget Ruth Miller until he comes back and talks to us. He went down to that place and saw the woman who runs it, and he seems satisfied. He says you two are to relax and remember this is a holiday, but not necessarily Roman. He’ll be back in a day or two. Sends love. That gives me a big pain.”
“Well!” Beulah abandoned the pins and needles. It must have been Bessy’s leg after all. “Satisfied, is he? He’s been wrong before.”
“I don’t know.” Roberta frowned. “He sounds awfully certain, and he’s underscored a lot. Words like ‘forget’ and ‘relax’ and ‘Roman.’” She put the letter in her sweater pocket. “What do you want to do this morning?”
“I’d like to visit the Cloisters,” Bessy said.
“You aren’t appropriate,” Beulah assured her. There was egg yolk on Bessy’s forehead. She looked like a yokel; yolk, yokel. Beulah applauded herself with a peal of light laughter. “Why don’t we go to the zoo?”
“That’s the thing,” Roberta agreed. “And we’ll take the baby if we can get him away from Miss Bassingworthy.”
“I wouldn’t put up with a nurse who called herself Miss Bassingworthy. What’s happened to the Lizzies and the Delias? Make the woman tell you her Christian name and call her by it.”
Roberta said, “It’s Guinevere.” When Beulah’s face began to mottle, she hurried on. “But I think we can shake her. She’s forever yapping about changing her English upper plate for an American model, and Nick said she could have it. Hands across the sea with teeth in them. So why don’t I send her to the dentist?”
“Let me tell her,” Beulah said. “I know how. I may live in the backwoods, but I’ve read Galsworthy.” She got up briskly. “The nursery door is the one with the pandas running up and down, isn’t it? Why not Teddy bears? The whole house is un-American.”
When the door closed, Bessy removed the egg from her forehead and smiled at Roberta. “I knew it was there all the time, but Beulah has so little pleasure. And you mustn’t be upset when I’m afraid of the lions. It won’t mean anything. Is that the morning paper, dear?”
Roberta handed it over. “Nothing in it. You’re a cute one, Miss Bessy.”
“Thank you,” Bessy said, scrambling the paper and dropping sheets to the floor. “Mark’s ad should be in this unless he changed his mind before he did it. You know what I mean, don’t you?”
“Sure. But what are you steamed up about? I thought you said an ad would be useless?”
“I said that because I wanted him to do it. That’s the way I get things done.”
“Bless my soul,” Roberta said. “Go on.”
“When I was against it, they were for it,” Bessy beamed. “It always happens that way… Wait a minute, I’ve lost the page. Of course I wanted Mark to advertise. Just think how that person is going to feel, even if there never was a doctor.”
“What person?”
“The one who gave her a shove.”
“Miss Bessy!”
“Somebody sitting at breakfast this morning, just like us, opening the paper just like me, saying there’s nothing in it, just like you. And then finding—yes, here it is.” She read the lines with relish.
Roberta leaned over her shoulder. “Miss Bessy, you think Mark’s wrong about this, don’t you?”
“I don’t know, dear. I’m not very reliable about natural death and suicide. We’ll wait and see.”
“What good will waiting do? He’s out of town and we’re helpless.”
“Not helpless. There may be replies and we can call for them.”
Roberta read the ad a second time. “That’s his apartment number. It isn’t far from here. He can’t expect anything or he’d have asked us to check.”
“I don’t expect anything, myself,” Bessy admitted. “Not in the mail.”
“Huh?”
Bessy was saved from an explanation. An infantile wail cut through the panelled door as if it were made of paper, and two adult voices rose and fell in accusation and denial.
“The Forsyte Saga,” Roberta said as she charged out of the room.
Bessy was glad to be alone. She collected bits of egg and shell from the cloth, the centre bowl of fruit, and the floor, and wondered why an egg that barely filled a cup on one occasion could cover a room on another. The voices outside the door were augmented by Roberta’s. Something about teeth. Well, it was to be expected. Beulah had probably made comparisons.
She wanted no part of it, because she was already on Miss Bassingworthy’s side, so she left the dining room by a side door and found her way to a small room Nick called his den. It held a battered desk, a telephone, and a leather couch for napping. Bessy sat at the desk and inserted a finger in the dial. It spun nicely. She liked it.
Mark had said relax. He’d said this was a holiday, not necessarily Roman. A Roman holiday. Make a Roman holiday. Butcher. Butchered to make a Roman holiday. There now, she told herself happily. I live in the backwoods, too, and listen to me!
Butcher, she went on. Butcher, blood. Blood, murder. Murder… In another minute she had an idea, practical, cheap, and all her own. She wouldn’t tell a soul. Not a single soul except one. And it was every bit as good as anything Beulah had ever done. She gloated quietly and found a small flaw. It was a pity, but she’d never know which soul it was.
She picked up the phone book and turned the pages. Such a big book, so many names, and she had time for only one. Well, maybe later on—Her fat finger travelled slowly down a page and up again. Hope. Hope House. She dialled carefully. It can’t do any harm, she told herself, and it makes me feel useful.
A voice said, “Hope House.”
Bessy glared into the mouthpiece and growled: “Murder will out!”
The scream exceeded her expectations. She sat back and tried to guess. Miss Plummer? Miss Brady? Miss Small? The one named Jewel? The one with the spotted face? One of those people she’d heard about and would never really know.
She had almost decided on the one with the spotted face when Beulah shouted from the dining room. She joined her, carelessly humming off key.
“What were you yelling about before?” she asked Beulah.
“Don’t try to turn my attention to myself,” Beulah answered. “What were you doing in there? Reading Nick’s mail?”
“Beulah!”
“Never mind.” There wasn’t anything important in Nick
’s mail and she knew it. “The zoo is off. That woman—”
“Did you tell her what kind of teeth to get?”
“We never got around to her teeth. It was the baby’s. He got a new one himself this morning and bit me with it. But it had a silver lining. That woman thinks he shouldn’t go out, so I told Roberta you and I had some Christmas shopping to do. Go put your things on.”
“But we haven’t any Christmas—”
Beulah hissed. “Do you want to know what happened to Ruth Miller or not?”
Miss Plummer sat behind the desk, sipping a cup of tea and worrying.
At nine-thirty Miss Brady had come to her room and asked her to take the desk as a special favour. Her face had looked like thunder and her voice was hard. She’d apologised, though, and said it was an emergency. She and Miss Small had to see Mrs Marshall-Gill, she’d said. That was odd, because they’d seen Mrs Marshall-Gill the night before and come home late, looking like rags.
And now it was noon and the lounge was full of girls who had no business to be there in the middle of the day. Home from work in the middle of the day when there was no food served except to staff. And Kitty had brought the tea without being asked. Something was going on that she didn’t know about, and nobody would tell her anything. When she’d asked Kitty, that one had slipped off as usual. In the lounge now, with the others, and the door shut.
Miss Plummer asked herself what it meant. Mrs Marshall-Gill twice in twenty-four hours. And a man last night, according to her sister who’d refused to say anything else and was keeping out of sight. And that old woman several nights ago. It all added up to something, and it meant trouble. She’d been feeling trouble in the air for days.
Some of the girls had felt trouble, too. She’d seen it in the way they acted, short and snappy when there was no reason to be. And she’d heard whispers, ugly, troublemaking whispers. She looked at the lounge door and wondered what would happen if she walked in and asked for an explanation. Even Jewel was in there, and she had no business to be. Twelve to one she was on duty. Suppose somebody wanted to go to the top floor?... Miss Plummer thought that over. No one had used the elevator for more than an hour. Everybody who came in went directly to the lounge.
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