“Of course you know Harris has the room that used to be Ruth Miller’s,” Miss Brady said. “That’s why you want to go there, isn’t it?”
“Not particularly. This is routine.”
She didn’t speak again until they came to the door. “You can’t go in,” she said. “I’ll leave it open and you stand right here. And be good enough to keep your mouth shut. There’s a blind girl in there, she’s the one I’m worried about. I don’t want her to know anything about you. She’s lived in this neighbourhood all her life and can’t possibly have any connection with Ruth Miller.”
Her finger was on her lips when she opened the door quietly. That, he saw at once, was a sign to the elderly woman who sat between the two beds. The only light was a night lamp on the bed table.
“It’s me, April,” Miss Brady said. “I’m not coming in, I only want to know how you are. Have you had your dinner?”
“Yes, Miss Brady. I’m all right.”
He saw her then, huddled in a deep chair. She was tiny, fair, and too fragile. She was the one who had held the other girl’s head in her lap and caressed the other girl’s face.
“Any change, Mrs Fister?” Miss Brady whispered.
He hardly heard her. Lillian Harris was the still figure on the bed. She was swathed in bandages and covered to the chin. Her face was a waxen oval marked with pale lips and dark, curling lashes, and if she was breathing he couldn’t see it. He started forward. The woman at the bedside stood up and shook her head. He stopped where he was.
The woman and Miss Brady spoke to each other in the language of looks. Neither moved, even the childish girl in the chair was motionless, but he could feel and hear a cordon form between him and the bed.
Miss Brady took his arm and they were out in the hall again; the door closed behind them and he heard a key turn on the inside. She dropped his arm, and when she spoke her voice was sharp and unnaturally high. “What were you trying to do in there?”
He was blunt. “She looks dead. Is she?”
She drew away from him. “Dead? Are you crazy? She’s unconscious, I told you that before.”
“Maybe she was, before. But you didn’t go near her this time.”
She made a sound in her throat. “Mr East, I’m going to ask you to leave. At once. You’re going too far.”
“No,” he answered. “No, I’m not… Why wasn’t that girl sent to a hospital?”
“Dr Kloppel didn’t think it was necessary. He says she’ll come out of it soon. Mrs Fister knows what to do.”
He leaned against the clean, bare wall, under the dim hall light, and waited for sounds in the room behind the locked door. “Who is that woman, that Mrs Fister?”
“The housekeeper. She’s been with us since we opened. We also employ her sister. Miss Plummer.”
“Plummer. She keeps cropping up. I’d like to see Miss Plummer.”
“That’s impossible and I mean it. She has influenza, nobody sees her, not even Miss Small and myself… Suppose we go down and check on Minnie May. There’s nothing else up here.”
“Not yet. Wait.” The packroom door was ajar, giving a glimpse of nondescript luggage; a clean paper tablet hung on the wall beside the phone. There was another door a few feet away, marked “Bath.” “Is that the one?” he asked.
“If you mean Harris, yes.”
“Can you think of any reason why I can’t look it over?”
She raised her hands in a sudden gesture and dropped them to her sides. It was a beating, batlike movement, crude and rudderless, common to people like Kitty Brice and Jewel who were short on vocabulary, but foreign to the Miss Bradys. She collected herself at once.
“You’ve infected me with something,” she laughed, “and I don’t like it. But don’t think I’m cracking up.” She led the way, and he stood by while she turned on the light. “Help yourself,” she invited. “It’s none of my business how you waste your time and your clients’ money. See? No blood. We’re very tidy. And don’t take all night, please. This is a fairly public place.”
Nice recovery, he told himself. “I’ll be as quick as I can,” he promised.
It was not a large room; one tub in an alcove, one shower, one washbasin over by the window. He stepped into the shower and examined the faucets. “Harris looks to be about five feet six,” he said easily. “So the faucets are all wrong for a bump on the head. A full inch too high. If they were lower I could understand what happened. Slip, stagger, wham.”
“It was the floor,” she said. “It’s concrete. If she slipped and struck her head on the floor, that would do it.”
“Don’t you think it’s a little small for that?”
“What is?”
“The floor space. Not much more than a square yard. She’d have to be double-jointed… Why don’t you tell me all about it?”
“But there’s nothing to tell!” She was heartily careless. “She fell or slipped, and blacked out for a minute. Tried to reach her room, got mixed up, landed over by the window, blacked out again, and struck her head on the washbasin. There was blood around the basin and in the shower.”
“Who figured that out for you?”
“We all figured it. And the doctor.” She laughed again. “What’s the matter, don’t you believe it?”
He had walked over to the window and was looking at the basin. “I believe the blood,” he said. “But it was funny about the light being off, wasn’t it?”
“Ah,” she said. “One of those wretched girls told you that!”
“The girls told me nothing. I mean nothing about the light. Mrs Sutton picked that one up.”
“Mrs Sutton! Well there’s a perfectly simple explanation. She could walk around and do things up to a certain point. She turned the light out when she tried to get to her room. Habit. That’s medically sound. Read up on concussion.”
“Maybe I will.” He raised the window, absently, as if it were a thing he did every night in that same room. The cold wind came in, and Miss Brady drew back. He stood there alone, looking down into the courtyard. “Do you mind turning out the light?” he asked. “I want to see how it looks when everything is dark.”
He heard her cross the floor; the light went out and she came to stand beside him, shivering.
“Now it’s Miller,” she said quietly. “Not Harris any more. Miller.”
“It’s always been Miller,” he answered.
The night was filled with far-off sound. The city was remote. He thought it was the cold that made him feel lost. He felt as if he and the shivering woman beside him were the only people in the world. Even the house, above, below, and around them, had no substance. He was shivering himself and his breathing matched hers.
The lamp on the street filled the court with a faint glow; only the corners were dark. A white cat sat immobile on the fence, staring at the house. Its sleek white head was held high, its interest was unmistakable, even at a distance. It looked as if it were watching them, watching and listening. It was a beautiful cat, and oddly contemplative.
He leaned from the window and looked up and down. There were lights on the ground floor but only a few above it. They were bright patches on the dark walls. One of the patches was the window in the room to his left. That window was closed. Ruth’s window, once. Lillian’s window now. There was another light directly over it, and that window was partly open. The shade was drawn, but there was perhaps an inch of space between it and the sill. Something that looked like a sheet of white tissue paper fluttered on the sill. He and the cat watched. He knew the cat was watching.
And as they watched, the paper was caught in an eddy of wind. It turned on the sill and writhed, it rose and fell as if it were alive, and spiralled down into the court. It straightened out and turned on itself and spiralled to the earth. The white cat screamed and flowed down the fence like milk, and was lost in the shadows.
He sighed.
“What was that?” Miss Brady’s voice was like a whip.
“A sheet of tissue paper,
I think. It came from the top floor, the room over the one we just left.”
“Oh. For a minute I thought—that damned cat, it always sits there! That’s my bedroom. Miss Small is wrapping Christmas presents and the place is a mess. She isn’t very tidy.”
He heard her go over to the door; the light clicked on. “I don’t see the point of this darkness,” she said. “Unless you’re trying to frighten me, and you can’t. Are you going to spend the night here?” When he didn’t reply, she came back to the window. “What’s wrong now?”
“Have you got a music box in your bedroom?”
“Not anymore.” She was startled. “Why?”
“I thought I heard something that sounded like a music box. It’s stopped now.”
“I did have one but it disappeared several days ago. Miss Small knew how much I liked it so I suppose she found another to take its place.” She laughed softly. “Now I’ll have to act surprised, thanks to you… Really, Mr East, we’ve got to get out of here. What comes next?”
They were in the hall. “I’m thinking about that,” he said.
Words were falling into place in his mind, one after the other, falling into line and sequence, making sentences for a child’s primer. The cat sat on the fence. The cat saw the paper. What did the cat see? The cat saw the white paper. The cat saw the white—
“Miss Brady,” he said, “I’d like to see Ruth Miller’s suitcase.”
She was amiable and amused. “I’ve done that and you know it. There’s the packroom, get it out yourself. It’s a straw affair, just inside the door. Big letter M in black paint. Looks as if she’d put it on herself.”
He found the case. “Unlocked?”
“Yes.” She watched, incuriously.
He unfastened the imitation leather straps and threw back the lid. Her sudden gasp was as genuine as his own. Ruth Miller’s clothing was a jumbled heap; someone hadn’t cared what happened to it. A thin summer dress, faded by too many washings, lay on top. And on top of the dress was an enamel box. He took it up carefully. “Your disappearing property, Miss Brady?”
“Yes.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “And what is it doing here?”
“I don’t know! I can’t imagine who or why—I simply can’t believe—”
He stood under the light, turning the box in his hands. “Pretty,” he said. “Somebody thought as much of it as you did, perhaps even more.”
“I don’t get it,” she said. “I don’t understand.”
“That’s easy. Somebody wanted it, took it, and hid it. To be collected at a later date. Can you think of a safer hiding place than a suicide’s suitcase? A suitcase that had already been searched?” While he talked, his thumbnail traced the deep carved lines that bit into the metal base. “Pretty thing,” he admired. “Substantial, too. Cloisonné on solid bronze. French… What did you do when you missed it?”
“Nothing. What could I do? That insane ad of yours had just appeared, and the place was a madhouse. I couldn’t face more talk.”
“In a way I don’t blame you.” He held the box to the light again. Blue forget-me-nots and pink bow-knots. “Easy to pawn. Easy to smuggle out of the house in a coat pocket, but that didn’t happen. This little gadget said something to somebody… Not an ordinary run-of-the-mill theft, Miss Brady. What did it hold?”
“Only powder. Face powder.”
“Powder and tunes, the dear French. I’d like to keep it for a while, do you mind?”
“No, but—”
“I’ll give it back. I may even find your thief, quietly and without involving you. What tune does it play? Something about love, love, love?” His fingers found the opening catch.
“Don’t!” she said. “They’ll hear you in there!”
He knew what she meant. The room with the locked door was less than two yards away. That’s where Lillian Harris was, swathed like a mummy because she had hurt her head.
He hesitated, fearful of moving too fast. He couldn’t afford to lose the precarious ground he had just gained. But he wanted an audience, any audience, residents, servants, staff. He wanted someone to say, “Get this. You know that detective? Well, he’s playing Miss Brady’s music box up on the seventh floor. He’s a nut.” And that would travel from mouth to mouth because it was too good to keep. It was crazy, it was comical, it was a scream. That detective, standing in the seventh-floor hall with Miss Brady, playing Miss Brady’s music box.
That would mean something to somebody. That would tell somebody the box was no longer safe.
Miss Brady spoke in a furious undertone. “Listen to that! This place is a parade ground!”
He heard the footsteps then, the sharp clean clack of high heels coming down the hall on the other side of the fire door. That would do it, that was what he wanted. He raised the lid of the box as Moke and Poke rollicked through the door and stopped abruptly. The tinkling notes rang down the hall with gentle, plaintive insistence.
Believe me if all those endearing young charms that I gaze on so fondly today—
“What are you girls doing here?” Miss Brady asked. “You know this is out of bounds while Lillian is sick.”
Moke held up a paper bag. “We brought her grapes.” Her eyes were on the box, wide and incredulous. He saw Poke’s hand reach out and touch Moke’s. It looked like a warning.
Thou wouldst still be adored as this moment thou art, let thy loveliness fade as it will—
The little box paid homage, pacified, and promised.
“She can’t eat them now,” Miss Brady said. “Keep them until tomorrow. And do run along now, there’s too much racket here already.”
Mark beckoned. “Say, you kids. Look what we found in Ruth’s suitcase. What do you think of that?”
“Pretty,” Moke said.
“It’s Miss Brady’s,” he went on. “She lost it. And now it turns up in Ruth’s luggage.”
Moke and Poke looked straight into his eyes and said nothing.
They stood in a circle under the dim light, and three of the four faces were blank. Mark snapped the lid and the music stopped. He picked up the suitcase. “Thanks, Miss Brady, you’ve been very helpful. I’m taking this temporarily, you’ll get it back with the box… Miss Small’s room again?”
“Yes. I’ll come with you.”
“Don’t trouble, please. These girls will announce my sex and proximity… Come along, you two.”
They left her with one hand raised to the locked door.
Down in Miss Small’s room he seated Moke and Poke with a flourish. “Now,” he said, “take that look off your faces and eat your nice grapes yourselves. And when you’ve got your voices back, tell me why this little box knocked you for a loop.”
Moke put the grapes on Miss Small’s desk. “Leave Angel have them. She likes fruit.”
“Leave Angel buy her own,” he said. “Come on, I’m waiting. What’s wrong with this box?”
Moke wet her lips. “Mr East, that box is stolen goods.”
“I know that. It was stolen from Miss Brady.” Gasps followed his statement. “Well, what’s wrong with that, except that it isn’t nice?”
Four frightened eyes almost prepared him for what was coming, but not quite. “I don’t know about Miss Brady,” Moke said, “but that box was stolen from Blackman’s.”
He wanted to shout. What he said was, “Glory be!... Moke, are you absolutely certain?”
They were both certain, but only after they had turned the box upside down and satisfied themselves about the marking.
According to Poke, Blackman’s had imported twenty-four musical powder boxes for Valentine gifts the year before. Different designs, different tunes, eighteen-fifty each. But, she said, they didn’t move so good in the counter display, so the buyer got the window-dresser to use one in the accessory window on the Fifth Avenue corner.
“Wait,” Mark said. “Was the counter display in Ruth Miller’s department?”
“Yes, sir. Not her counter but next to it. But she cou
ld wait on anybody in the whole department. It’s all toilet goods.”
“I get it. Go on.”
According to Moke, the window dressing had helped like nobody’s business, and the boxes went like hot cakes until there was only one left. The one Mr East was holding, only it was in the window then. And a very good customer put her name down for it. The very same box, you couldn’t make a mistake about it, because there was only one with forget-me-nots and pink bows. And Believe me if all those endearing. But it disappeared.
“Out of the window?” He held his breath. If she said yes, then he was wrong.
She said no. “No, sir, off the window-dresser’s boy’s truck. The boy cleared out the window around four o’clock, which is what he did every week. He had to get it ready for the new stuff they put in at night. And he parked his truck in a corner by the window, which he always did too, a darkish little corner next to the employees’ elevator. He was in and out of the window, and he didn’t notice anybody that he could remember when they asked him about it later. But when he took the truck downstairs and the stock clerks checked their own merchandise, there wasn’t any box. Gone.”
“That was last February?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why do you remember so much detail, Moke? Blackman’s must lose a lot of valuable stuff. It can’t be much of a shock when an eighteen-fifty gadget disappears.”
“This here one was a shock. The customer that wanted it was a relation of the Blackman family. So everybody got talked to. And the window-dresser’s boy was sort of new and somebody had to be the goat so he got fired.”
There was no one in Hope House who could have been a window-dresser’s boy a year ago. But perhaps in the neighbourhood—
“Too bad about the boy. Ever see him again?”
“No, sir. They wouldn’t give him a reference either. Just told him to make out like he never worked at Blackman’s and they wouldn’t have him arrested. They couldn’t prove anything, see, so they just let him go without a reference. That’s the way stores do… Mr East, you never found that box in Ruth’s suitcase!”
Death of a Doll Page 18