Red Gardenias

by Jonathan Latimer

  "A small town's prurient curiosity," Carmel said bitterly.

  "I'm really sorry, Carmel," said Talmadge.

  The taproom was beginning to fill, and men and women, as smartly dressed as a New York cocktail-hour crowd, passed by their table. Everybody seemed to know everybody else, and most of the new arrivals either spoke or waved to Crane's companions. The newcomers were very gay and noisy.

  "The haut monde of Marchton," Talmadge drawled.

  "They look nice," Crane said.

  He felt a warm glow about the case. He liked the seductive hollow above Carmel's bare collarbone, the sweet spitefulness of Alice, the name of Talmadge March. He felt sorry for Ann Fortune, sitting at home. He liked the feeling that his expense account was unlimited.

  He hoped he would not solve the case too quickly. He wondered if he could be a little drunk. "One more?" he suggested to the others. They were perfectly willing. While Charley collected empty glasses the conversation turned to duck shooting. The season had been open for a couple of weeks, but there hadn't been many birds. The cold weather had made them hopeful for next Sunday's shooting. Talmadge asked Crane if he'd like to shoot with them, and Crane said Peter March had already suggested it.

  "It's usually fine shooting," Dr Woodrin said.

  For the first time Talmadge spoke without affectation. "Wonderful shooting."

  Crane learned that the river lands where the March family and friends shot duck had been acquired by Great-Grandfather March when he emigrated from New England in 1823. He had farmed by the river and died there, and had willed the land as a perpetual estate for the family until there should be no direct male descendants. Then it could be sold.

  "Old Jonathan March's idea," Talmadge explained, "was to provide a backlog for the family, a place they could return to when defeated by the outside world."

  "He didn't know his grandsons would nick the world for about twenty million dollars," Dr Woodrin said.

  "I think it's a nice idea," Crane said. "Is the land worth anything now?"

  "About five thousand dollars," Talmadge said.

  "It's swell for duck shooting," Dr Woodrin said.

  "We wouldn't sell it if we could," Talmadge agreed. "Besides, the doctor wouldn't let us. He's been appointed trustee for the Jonathan March Estate."

  "It's a responsible job," Carmel said, smiling. "Administering an estate worth five thousand dollars."

  "Five thousand is a lot of money as far as I'm concerned," Dr Woodrin said.

  Charley brought them their drinks. Crane was surprised to see Alice March had switched to pernod and water. He had had one unfortunate experience with this substitute for absinthe and he had respect for anyone who could drink it.

  Pouring his ale into a tilted glass, Dr Woodrin inquired, "What kind of a shot are you, Crane?"

  "I'm fine with a machine gun."

  Carmel laughed. She appeared, no doubt because of the martinis, quite gay. "I don't believe we have a machine gunner in Marchton's upper set."

  Alice March downed half her pernod, looking as serene as the plump mothers old Italian masters put on canvas. Admiring her fortitude, Crane drank his double scotch.

  Carmel said, "I do my best work with a pearl-handled automatic."

  "That's fine for close work," Crane said. "Nothing like it for a hand-to-hand encounter with a duck." Alice March said, "Carmel's noted for her close work."

  A bellhop in a maroon uniform with two vertical rows of gold buttons halted by the table. "Mr Crane?"

  Crane said, "I believe I am."

  "Telephone," the Bellhop said. "Telephone what?"

  "For you, sir."

  "For me? A telephone? What kind of a telephone?"

  "A telephone call, sir."

  "How disappointing!" He stood up, made a sweeping bow. " Kindly pardon me." He followed the bellhop.

  He heard Talmadge say, "A bit high, I'd say." He heard Dr Woodrin say, "Makes Richard look like a teetotaler." He heard Carmel say, "I like him."

  He felt very pleased he had fooled them into thinking he was drunk. He giggled a little at the thought of his cleverness, bumped into a man, said, "Excuse me many times." He carried out his role so thoroughly he had to be helped into the phone booth.

  He spoke into the phone. "Crane & Company, novelties, knickknacks, knickers."

  It was Ann Fortune. She said, "I thought so."

  "I can't help it," he said. "I've been plied with drinks by a mysterious Russian lady."

  "I bet."

  "And by a man named Talmadge March. He's going to foreclose our mortgage." Ann said, "I've traced Delia."

  "Unhand us, Talmadge March," Crane said. Ann said, "I've traced Delia."

  "Huh? Delia? Oh, Delia. How?"

  "Simple deduction."

  Crane groaned. "Please. You sound like Philo Vance. Pretty soon you'll be dropping your g's."

  "If you come home I'll drive you to the Brookfield house."

  "In whose car?"

  "Peter March left one here for us."

  "For us," Crane repeated ominously. "I suppose you've been roistering with him all afternoon?"

  "Why, yes, I have."

  "Why isn't he at work?" he demanded. "Why does he have to fiddle around our little dovecot while I freeze, careening from ice cube to ice cube?"

  "Aren't you getting your metaphors a little mixed?"

  "What's a metaphor, if not to mix?"

  There was no answer, and Crane considered the telephone mouthpiece darkly for a moment. "I suppose I can come out. I suppose you called the office and got everybody aware of the fact I wasn't there, anyway."

  "I didn't call the office," Ann said. "But, how did — "

  "I simply asked the telephone operator to ring the best bar in town."

  CHAPTER V

  That morning, after she had conferred with Beulah about dinner, Ann Fortune put on her black caracul coat, freshened her lipstick and called a taxi.

  "The nearest dairy," she told the driver.

  This was her first attempt at detection and she felt a little excited. She wondered if the trail would lead her into one of those situations she had so often seen in the William Powell-Myrna Loy movies: possibly to a penthouse with a suave villain from whom she would be saved in the nick of time by the arrival of Bill Crane.

  The only trouble was that she felt no confidence in the arrival of Bill Crane anywhere in the nick of time; he was more likely to stop for a drink on the way and come too late.

  Not that she didn't like Bill Crane; it was just that he didn't seem to take things seriously. Take the case they were working on: Richard March and John March dead from gas, and Simeon March accusing Carmel, his daughter-in-law, of having murdered them. It was a serious affair! But Bill, apparently, wasn't doing anything about it. He acted as though they were on one of those Long Island house parties he used to take her to in New York when he wasn't working. He acted...

  "This do, miss?" the driver asked.

  It was the Prima Dairy. She smiled a little at the squat white building. It didn't look like the sort of place Myrna Loy would be detecting in.

  However, she did find out something. Her smile almost disorganized the young clerk who took her order for milk and cream, but he retained possession of enough faculties to tell her that the dairy had the only rural service for Brookfield and Blue Lake in Marchton.

  Delia's note telling Richard to shut off milk deliveries must have been written two summers ago since Richard had been dead since February. Ann asked the clerk if he could find a Brookfield account in which the milk had been shut off for a week end around the middle of July of that year.

  The clerk discovered that a Saturday two summers ago had come on July nineteenth. Under Delivery Stop Orders on that date he found one for a Raymond Maxwell, 12 February Lane, Brookfield.

  Under the M file in the regular account book, the clerk found the house on February Lane was owned by a Charles G. Jameson, Brookfield real-estate operator.

  Bills had been
paid by postal money orders, but there was a letter from Mrs Maxwell, opening the account. Ann's heart jumped when she caught sight of purple ink and Delia's large handwriting.

  The clay road to Brookfield was so thickly lined with trees it seemed as though the sedan was going through a long tunnel. Crane brooded over the lecture he had just been given on the evils of strong drink. A warm afternoon sun sent saffron rays angling through elms and oaks and maples, spotlighted bright masses of party-colored leaves. In the air there was a smell of smoke.

  He had to admit, though, Ann had done a neat piece of detection in tracing Delia through the dairy. "I guess I owe you a bottle of milk," he said.

  "Champagne," Ann said.

  "All right. What kind of champagne do you like?"

  "Demi-sec, in magnums."

  "You'll get it," he said, and added, "I hope it makes you very sec."

  This terrible pun made him feel better and he told her what he'd heard in the taproom.

  He told her about the discovery of Richard's body, of the lipstick on his face, and of the smell of gardenia on his coat. They wondered why Talmadge March had tried to trap Carmel. Or had it been his idea of a joke?

  "I'm beginning to think Richard was having an affair with Carmel," Crane said.

  "In addition to our Delia?"

  "Richard was a gay dog."

  "Do you think Carmel'd deceive her husband with his first cousin?" Ann asked. "I don't know."

  A break in the tunnel of trees brought them out into bright sunlight. On the right was a black field, stacked evenly with Indian tepees of cornstalks, and dotted with plump, bright pumpkins. A black-and-white calf, chained to a fence post, grazed in the ditch beside the road.

  Crane added, "Look at Peter, too. She's quite friendly with him."

  "Peter told me this afternoon he wanted to get Richard's letters to protect a lady," Ann said. "From hints he dropped I got the idea the lady is Carmel, and that the letters were important." She glanced at his face. "And that gave me an idea."

  The road curved to the right, crossed a small stone bridge and entered a valley. Apple orchards, fruit trees and cornfields lay on either side of them. They passed a wagon loaded with yellow feed corn.

  "I think you're wonderful," Crane said.

  "Be serious. If Carmel was your wife and was having an affair with Richard, what would you do?"

  "I'd lock her up in the coalbin."

  "Please be serious."

  "I'd be angry with Richard."

  "Exactly "

  "My God!" Crane blinked at her. "You don't think John killed him?"

  "He could have discovered Carmel in the car with Richard (that fits in with the gardenia), sent her into the club, then killed Richard."

  "How?"

  Ann smiled. "That's as far as I've gone."

  "I've got an idea." Crane lit a cigarette, put it in her mouth. "I'll tell you if you're not mad at me."

  "I've never been mad at you."

  "No?"

  "Well, I wish you wouldn't drink so much."

  Crane was about to tell her of his plan to make people think he was a drunkard so they'd disregard him, but it didn't sound so convincing sober.

  "All right, I won't," he said. "Here's the idea."

  He reconstructed the murder (if it had been a murder) for her. Richard, he said, had passed out. Then John, or someone else, had fastened a rubber hose to the exhaust of his sedan, run the free end through a partially open window, and started the engine. Then, when Richard was dead, he removed the hose.

  "I think that's very clever," Ann declared.

  The road came to a good cement highway, and Ann turned to the left and increased the sedan's speed. The sun was barely above a long ridge ahead of them, and the air was cooler. Haze hung like muslin over the distant countryside.

  Crane was frowning. "Only then I don't see who killed John," he admitted.

  Ann held her cigarette out the window to let the wind remove the ash. "John killed himself. Remorse."

  Crane looked at her smiling face with respect. "That makes it pretty neat." He pulled the tan camel's hair around him. "But the old man is certain Carmel did the murdering."

  Ann said, "That's a good theory, too."

  Crane had another thought. "Maybe Carmel signed her notes to Richard with the name Delia."

  "She didn't. Her handwriting's different."

  "You've been busy, haven't you?"

  "One of us has to work."

  Crane retired into high dudgeon. He had begun to be a little alarmed about Ann Fortune. It would be an awful thing if she solved the case singlehanded. He would never live it down. He had a dreadful feeling he might have to go to work.

  "I need a drink," he said, and then, as Ann looked at him, added, "of nice warm tea."

  Presently he saw they were entering Brookfield. Middle-sized houses, many with fine lawns, sat under great oak and chestnut trees. There were gardens, filled with the yellow and white and orange flowers of late fall, around the houses and barbered hedges around them. Twice the clear stream forced the road to arch its back with stone bridges.

  The village had a double main street with a partition of young trees in the middle. The stores had evidently been influenced by Tudor England. Their dark, exposed beams and red bricks contrasted with clean sidewalks and Paris-green grass. A one-story building had two display windows: one read, Daphne Gray, Beautician; the other, Charles G. Jameson, Real Estate.

  Ann parked the sedan at an angle to the curb, and they went into the office and found an old man in a pair of slippers tinkering with a radio. He wore a coat and trousers and a shirt, buttoned at the collar, but no tie.

  "Fix one o' these?" he demanded.

  Crane said he couldn't. He showed the old man a card from the American Insurance Company, said he was an investigator, and asked him about the Maxwells. He didn't know very much about them.

  "I recollect they paid Chuck in advance for two years," he said in a reedy voice.

  "Then the lease hasn't expired?" Ann asked.

  "No, ma'am. They got until next May." He looked curiously at Crane. "What you investigatin', Mr Maxwell's death?"

  Crane asked, "How'd you know he'd died?"

  "The house ain't been used this summer. And besides, another feller was inquirin' about him last January. I suspicioned he was dead then."

  Crane and Ann exchanged glances. Both were thinking Richard March had died soon after the man's inquiries, in February.

  "What'd the man want to know?" Crane asked.

  There was a sly look about the old man's bright eyes, as though he shared some secret with Crane. "Wanted to know what Mrs Maxwell looked like."

  "Did you tell him?"

  "We couldn't. Me and Chuck never laid eyes on her."

  "Did he want to know anything else?"

  The old man chuckled. "Wanted to know how much they used the house." He didn't make any noise, just shook inside.

  "How much did they?"

  The old man gave Crane that sly, secretive look. "It seemed kind of odd. They paid a right fine price for the house." He looked down at his slippers. "But they only came week ends."

  Crane asked if he'd seen Maxwell, and he said he had. He thought his name was assumed, but he wasn't sure.

  "You've no clue to who he was?" asked Ann.

  "Your speakin' of that's a funny thing." The old man looked at her with a pleased smile. "'Bout a month ago I seen a picture that looked a lot like the feller who was askin' for him in January. It was in the newspaper."

  "Who was it?"

  "John March, the one that died in his garage."

  Crane flicked a glance at Ann, then asked, "Do you think Mrs March and Mrs Maxwell were the same person?"

  "I got my idears."

  Ann was wearing a three-quarter length black caracul coat, fastened at the neck with a gold chain and cut so that it hung like a tunic to just about the knees. She undid the coat and found a photograph in an inside pocket.

 
; "Would you know Mr Maxwell?"

  "I reckon so," said the old man.

  Crane stared at her with reluctant admiration. He could see it was a photograph of Richard March. Tall, tanned and blond, he looked like a movie actor in gray slacks and an open shirt. Ann handed the picture to the old man, smiled at Crane.

  He made a face at her. She was too darned efficient. He thought he had better go to work. He thought it was a fine thing when a man had to work hard to keep ahead of a woman. Especially one as pretty as Ann.

  The old man handed back the photograph. "That's him."

  "Well, thanks," Crane said.

  "One more thing," said the old man, "though I don't know as it's much of a clue..."

  "It might be," Ann said. "What is it?"

  "Well, twice I borrowed matches from Mr Maxwell. An' both times he gave me a package from the Crimson Cat. That's a night club near here."

  A middle-aged man with spectacles and dandruff flakes on his blue serge suit came into the office. He turned out to be the old man's son, Charles, who operated the realty business. The old man told him Crane was an insurance investigator, looking up the Maxwells.

  "Been a lot of interest in them today," the younger Mr Jameson said.

  "How's that?" Crane asked.

  "A fellow came a couple of hours ago to collect the Maxwell things. He had a note from Mrs Maxwell." Ann said excitedly, "He wouldn't still be there?"

  "I don't know."

  Crane said, "How do we get there?"

  Following the younger Mr Jameson's directions, it took them three minutes to reach February Lane. The house was a Cape Cod cottage, white, with a high roof and a screened porch on the side. In the driveway was a big sedan with a woman in the driver's seat.

  As Ann brought their car to a stop the woman hooped the horn. Crane couldn't see her very well, but he got an idea she was young.

  A hollow, metallic voice called from the rear of the house, "What's wrong?"

  Ann exclaimed, "Our burglar!"

  The woman hit the horn again, pushed the starter. Arms bearing a cardboard box, the man came around the house, turned his face toward Crane and Ann, broke into an unsteady run. He jerked open the sedan's door, jumped in as it started. The door swung crazily. He reached out and closed it. The woman gave the motor gas.