“You heard Crawford,” Mark said slowly. “Plenty sane. But she may change her mind about that if it looks like a better buy. I don’t know what she’ll do, but we’ve got her on premeditation. I’m freezing. What’s next?”
“I’ve been thinking. I want to go in there now but some of the kids are still eating dinner. When I was in the lobby, checking the week-end book, I saw them. And there’s another bunch of them hanging up Christmas greens. Ugh! Go in there yourself, and you’ll see what I mean. I don’t want to take her out in front of everybody. It’ll be a messy business no matter what. Suppose she carries on.”
“You’ll have to go easy.” Mark looked at the kitchen windows, barred but uncovered. Clara was still at the table and Alexander had returned to his paper and the stove. Steam rose from the pot of soup stock. The lounge windows showed moving figures, indistinct behind the straight net curtains. Even as he watched, someone drew a curtain aside and hung a wreath. It had a brave, red bow. “There’ll be more in there soon,” he said. “That’s where they’re setting up the tree. You’ll have to wait, Foy. You can’t take her out with that kind of an audience. You’d start a panic. No matter how you work it, you’ll have to go through the lobby. The elevator doesn’t run to the basement. Wait until they’re bedded down for the night, you can afford to lose that much time.”
“Can I, now? And maybe you can tell me what’s to stop her walking out the front door this minute?”
“What excuse?”
“Say she was going to the theatre. Out to mail a letter. Figure that one.”
“If she tries it, let her go. You can close in on the corner, all quiet and orderly. But as long as she stays in the House, you’ve got to let her do as she likes until you have a clear and unmolested field. You don’t know how she’s going to take it, and some of those girls are no more than kids.” He was thinking of Moke and Poke. “Let them miss her tomorrow, let them wonder for a while.”
“Come to think of it,” Foy said slowly, “I wish she would walk out.”
“I know how you can start her thinking that way. Lock the front and back doors, make a show of it, and spread the word that nobody goes out, nobody. Not even to the corner for a magazine. When the late workers and the diners-out show up, let them in, chase them upstairs, and lock up all over again. Tell them nothing, they’ll do a better job of talking than you can. You’ll know almost at once if she’s taken the bait. She’ll get to one of your men with the most convincing tale on record, then—Open Sesame… Do they all know what she looks like?”
“They do now.”
“Then you’ve nothing to worry about. Tell them to let her get away with it. Where will you be?”
“Down the street in a parked car that doesn’t say ‘Police.’ If nothing happens, I’ll come back here around midnight.”
“You’re all set, you can’t fail. Either way you win. Smooth sailing!”
“Smooth sailing!” Foy repeated. “How many people in there are going to be asleep at midnight? None!”
“None,” Mark agreed, “but every innocent little head will be smothering under a blanket. You won’t see a soul. Take the elevator up and bring her down in it. All steel construction, like a little cage, and handy if she cuts up… And you might ask your boys to keep an eye peeled for Plummer. She seems to think they’ll ask her to work tonight. You can’t have that. If she shows up, send her back to bed. And don’t count on our friend to open her door to you like a lady. The passkeys are in the top left drawer of the lobby desk. I saw them this afternoon while chatting with Miss Brice on the subject of long-distance calls.”
“Think of everything, don’t you? Do this, do that. Just what do you expect to be doing yourself?”
“I’m through. I’m going up to the Suttons’, turn in my report, get my check, and proceed to spend as much of it as possible. Accompanied by friends from the country. I may let the Suttons help me. I may need help. Maybe you can join us later. Maybe, with luck, I’ll be flat on my face by midnight.”
Foy eyed him curiously. “Do you always act like this?”
“A couple of times, no. A couple of times I haven’t cared… Come on. I’ll give the place a last look, and then I’m off.”
They left the court, nodding to the silent Sobeloff who stood like a snowman against the outer wall. Moran, on duty at the front door, gave them a smart salute, but he looked beaten.
Mrs Fister was in charge of the desk, a black serge monolith with a white face and stubby white hands. The hands were busy with pretty work, weaving sprigs of holly into an evergreen garland. The top of the desk was a litter of berries, leaves, and small packages wrapped in coloured paper.
“All set for Christmas!” Foy said too heartily. “Those your presents?”
“I’m always remembered very nicely,” she said. “Some of our girls leave tomorrow for the holidays, that’s why I have these now.” She looked from Foy to Mark, calmly. “Did you gentlemen wish something?”
“The passkeys,” Foy said.
She bent to the drawer without hesitation and handed them over. Foy was confused. He could understand opposition, but not co-operation. When she blandly offered to unlock whatever he wanted unlocked, he turned brusque. No one was to leave the building, he said. She was to post that order and see that it was obeyed. Later on an officer would be stationed on each floor. Nothing to be alarmed about, it was routine only. Routine until the case was closed. He said it again, chopping off words until routine was the only one left.
Her mouth curled at the corners. “I understood the first time, Inspector,” she said. “But it’s to be hoped your men will be quiet. We don’t care to have the girls disturbed, not for anything. Now or later.” She nodded in the direction of the lounge. “We don’t care to have them disturbed.”
He knew what she meant. The lounge doors were ajar. Someone was playing the piano while four thin, serious voices struggled with “The First Noel.” It was a valiant performance, easy to visualise and hard to listen to. The Inspector’s thoughts returned again to Miss Maureen Foy. Miss Foy could sing “The First Noel” in convent French. Learned it when she was six. She’d sung it two nights before, cute as a bug, in her grandmother’s parlour in Brooklyn, wearing a skimpy little skirt and a skimpy little sweater and no lipstick to please the old lady. Those kids in there—
“Okay,” he said.
Mrs Fister continued, addressing Mark. “They’ll keep that up until ten or after. Some of them are trimming the tree. I’m sure the Board would appreciate your leaving things as they are for a while. I can’t speak for myself, not being in the position, but I’m sure the Board would want them to finish.”
He nodded. “But I have nothing to do with that, Mrs Fister. I’m through here, the Inspector’s in charge.” He clapped a hand on Foy’s shoulder and went away.
Moran let him out. Before the door closed behind him, he heard the chatter of the late diners as they straggled from the dining room; the pianist in the lounge struck a false chord, the singers broke down and squealed, and he left the House with the sound of laughter following.
Later, much later, he told the Suttons and Bessy and Beulah that he’d been walking. That was true. But when they asked him where, he couldn’t remember his route. Not all of it. He’d walked along the river for a while, he remembered the docks. He remembered the wooden sheds, roofed with snow, the clean, cold smell of the water, the ferryboats that moved from shore to shore like toys drawn by a child with a steady hand. Had Roberta ever cut windows in a cardboard shoebox, pasted them over with coloured tissue paper, fastened a lighted candle inside and a long cord outside, and pulled the resulting wonder up and down the sidewalk at night? He knew she hadn’t even before she told him so. Kids with money didn’t have toys like that… He’d stopped at the library and read the newspapers. What newspapers? Any papers. Papers, that’s all. And he’d walked by Blackman’s, dark from top to bottom except for one window with strong lights behind its draped and tufted silk curtain. Windo
w-dresser at work. He’d stopped at other places, street corners, little parks with snowed-in benches, dog wagons. He didn’t get to Roberta’s until long after midnight.
He walked and thought and talked to himself. He turned the thoughts into pictures, real and imaginary. Foy, parked in the snowy street, waiting. Sobeloff in the snowy courtyard, close to the wall for shelter, waiting. Another man on the snowy roof, watching the fire escape, watching the roof door, waiting. A man on each floor, pacing the dim halls, listening, waiting. Moran in the warm lobby, looking through the lounge doors to the corner where the Christmas tree twinkled in the light of the fire. Those were the real pictures.
The figure that vanished up the stairs was both real and imaginary. Real because he knew who she was and what she had done, even though he hadn’t seen her. Up the stairs from the first floor to the second, turning the key in Mrs Fister’s door, retrieving the extra costume from the packroom, returning to the lobby to stalk Ruth Miller, to put Ruth Miller within reach of Miss Plummer’s arm. Always hurrying, always looking over her shoulder, always prepared to meet inquisitive eyes. Always prepared.
What had she thought about when she followed Ruth to that eighth-floor room? Nothing new, nothing that she hadn’t thought for years.
He saw her as she must have looked five years before when she first came face to face with the girl she would later kill. Norman Crawford said they’d brought her to his office, calm and undisturbed in spite of the evidence, ready to talk herself out of it. She’d taken small things, glittering things, gilt compacts, novelty jewellery, little boxes set with semiprecious stones. She’d told them they were purchases, that she’d been collecting them one by one, that she’d been looking for a clerk. She had no charge account, there was no money, no cheque book in the handsome, capacious handbag. Only the small, glittering things, the little boxes. She’d liked little boxes.
Then they’d confronted her with Ruth Miller, who had seen the last, quick movement at the counter. Ruth Miller, standing with her back to the light for her own protection. The detectives had told her where to stand. They knew their stuff. And they’d told her not to speak. Protection, but it hadn’t been enough.
Norman Crawford said he would never forget it. The other one had broken loose, screamed, fought, tried to reach the girl who had identified her. Crawford said: “We sent Miss Miller away, we had to. She went to pieces, I nearly did myself. I still quake when I think of it. Demoralising, horrible… The other girl got the usual sentence, plus medical care.” Crawford repeated the psychiatrist’s report. It was hideously accurate. And he’d asked what he could do, his voice showing plainly that he knew the answer. Nothing.
Ruth Miller in the Hope House lobby, clinging to her suitcase, wrinkling her eyes, peering at the new faces, seeing an old, familiar one. No wonder she had tried to keep Roberta from investigating the shoplifter at Blackman’s. Roberta had given him that story in parentheses, but he’d known it was important. And when Libby had described the short-change episode, he’d known that was important, too. So had Libby… A good saleswoman, one of the best, who said she had never worked before.
Libby was nobody’s fool. She knew the value of past performance in estimating future behaviour. Her work had taught her that. She knew that past performance could be overlaid with fancy trappings, including promises sworn on the Bible, but given a duplicate set of the old circumstances, wham, it broke through. Good or bad, it broke through the veneer.
No experience in selling, never worked before. Easy to understand that now. Timid Ruth Miller, quiet, shy Ruth Miller, doing the only job she knew and trying to forget what it had once done to her.
Miss Brady’s room. The open window, a light, a stolen music box. Had Ruth opened the box herself? Before it killed her, had she listened to its music, identified it beyond doubt, relived the past that was already walking in her footsteps? Had she heard the past walking across Miss Brady’s Persian rugs? No, because it walked in rubber sneakers.
He walked on, thinking, talking to himself. It was ten-thirty. He didn’t want to know the time, but the clock on the Metropolitan tower told him with a bright face and emphasised it with chimes. After a few blocks he called a cab and returned to the place he thought he had left for good.
Miss Small looked at the traveling clock on her desk, looked at the silent telephone, and began to pace the floor. It was half past ten. The phone had been silent since nine-thirty, when Kitty Brice had called from the lobby. Kitty had sounded miles away because she was whispering.
She’d wanted to know if anyone had told Miss Small about the policemen. She’d tried to tell Miss Brady, but Miss Brady wasn’t in her room or else she wouldn’t answer her phone. Somebody ought to be told. There were policemen on every floor, and the one in the lobby wouldn’t let anybody out. Two girls had a date for the second show, their names were in the late book, but he wouldn’t let them out. Crossed their names off and sent them upstairs.
“We had more trouble, too,” Kitty had said. “I think you ought to know. Dot Mainwaring had about fifteen sleeping pills; she was counting them in the bathroom and Jewel caught her at it. Jewel took them away. Down the drain now, she says. I don’t know.”
Miss Small had told her not to worry.
“I’m sick,” Kitty had said. “Miss Small, I’m sick. I want to go to the doctor, but the cop won’t let me out either. And Mrs Fister and Jewel quit, so I’m all alone.”
Miss Small had told her to go to bed. That was the first she had heard about the policemen, it was the first time Monny had failed to consult her. She thought it over, wondering.
She was still thinking about it an hour later. Was Monny trying to keep things from her? Monny had been strained at lunch, and she hadn’t even come down to dinner. And she hadn’t phoned… Miss Small sat at her desk and put her aching head in her hands. If this thing came between her and Monny, if it broke their lives and happiness, cancelled out the years ahead and the planning—She whispered fiercely to herself.
“It can’t, it can’t, not when we have so much!”
She reached for the phone, let her hand fall, and reached again. When the other voice answered, her own was almost too choked to reply.
“You didn’t call me,” she said. “I’m worried about you. Are you all right?”
Miss Brady admitted to a headache.
“Is it too bad for company?” Miss Small asked. “I mean, would you like me to come up?”
“Not tonight.”
Miss Small replaced the receiver and looked at her surroundings. She hardly saw them, even though the carefully chosen lamps were bright, and the English chintz was gay and arresting. She was blind to everything but an absent face and filled with a pain that was like a drug. She knew she was living, but there was no life anywhere. No floor beneath her feet, no walls between her and the world. No world. She looked down into her lap and stroked the material of her skirt without feeling it. She dug into the rough tweed and rubbed a fluff of wool into a little ball that she rolled between her fingers. She knew how the little ball of wool ought to feel, but she felt nothing. She lifted the ornate inkwell, heavy with bronze and marble, and set it down again, hard on the polished wood. But she couldn’t hear it. The only thing she could hear was a congress of wind gathering on the rim of the world, small winds meeting in an ordained place, falling into line, whispering to each other, joining their soft, grey arms for added strength. Growing, swelling, darkening, ready for the signal to descend…
Miss Brady moved about her room in a litter of Christmas wrappings, picking up odds and ends of coloured paper and string, sometimes raising the lid of a cardboard box of tree ornaments. A few of the boxes were brown and dusty, crumbling at the edges. They were the old ones, her own, the ones she had brought from home. After a while she raised the lid of the smallest box; it had been carefully tied with knotted tinsel cord, ragged and tarnished. The box held the angel for the top of the Christmas tree.
The dingy pink face was the face of a
friend. It was the oldest thing she owned. She couldn’t remember a Christmas when she hadn’t looked first to the highest branch to see if it were there. Now the silver stars in the flaxen hair were almost black, and the gauzy wings hung limp and dejected. Last year she had darned them with silk thread, an awkward task for her fingers, and wired them to the body with tiny hairpins. But they hadn’t held.
She didn’t touch the angel but looked down at it, standing with her hands gripped behind her back. Then she put it aside with the other boxes.
There was one light burning in her bedroom and the bed was turned down, ready and waiting. The room was cold. But in spite of the cold she raised the window as far as it would go and looked out. There were lights in Miss Small’s windows. There were other lights along the walls, above and below. A white cat sat on the courtyard fence, almost invisible against the snow. But she saw him easily because she knew he was there. In the corner by the street gate a large man stood in the shadows.
She left the window open when she went back to the other room.
A sedan was parked down the street, but there was no one in it. There were two sets of footprints leading away, and it was easy to see where they went. They hadn’t been made too long ago, because the falling snow was filling the deep depressions. Mark followed them.
The courtyard was empty, too, and footprints told the same story there. Not too long ago.
The kitchen was empty and warm. Unlocked. That didn’t matter now. The night light showed the scrubbed wooden table, a large earthen bowl of cooked prunes, a stack of blue willow saucers.
He crossed the floor and listened before he started up the stairs.
When he entered the lobby, Moran was sitting at the switchboard, talking softly and urgently into the mouthpiece. Moran jumped when he heard the footsteps, but when he saw who it was he grinned feebly. His eyes and shoulders apologised for his nerves, and he jerked his head upward. He went on talking into the phone.
Death of a Doll Page 27