Bannerman’s eyes had turned away from Jellicoe. He was looking at the girl now and all the anger and hate were gone. Horror had taken their place.
“What made you think the man would still be in the station?” Gibby asked.
“That was where I had last seen him. I didn’t know any other place to look. He was still there and I went to him and spoke to him. At first he acted as though he knew nothing. He said he’d been watching me, trying to remember where he had met me before.”
“Treated it like an ordinary pickup?” Gibby asked.
She couldn’t quite answer that. She had never been involved in a pickup before and she had no idea of how they went. She did describe the exchanges between George and herself, however, and it was obvious that he had handled it as an ordinary pickup. He had invited her to go and have a drink with him. He had taken her as far as the house where all the police had been. It was evident that that had been Harry’s place. We probably had narrowly missed running into them there. Then he had said that he had forgotten that the place they were going to had moved but there was a good enough place back down the street. He had taken her to the bar.
In the bar he had excused himself for a few minutes and when he had returned, he had said something about thinking he remembered where they had met.
“At Sydney Bell’s place?” Gibby asked.
“Yes.”
“Had you met this man before?”
“No. I met none of her friends. She would just talk to people on the telephone, but she didn’t have me meet anyone.”
“I see,” Gibby said. “So then he went on and fed you another bit and another bit, narrowing down until he had hinted pretty strongly that he was thinking of Sydney Bell’s apartment early that morning when you had been up there rearranging the dead girl’s life for her.”
Joan nodded. “Yes,” she said. “He told me I was in trouble, terrible trouble, but I wasn’t to worry. He was going to help me. He said he had influence. He knew people. He said there wasn’t anything that couldn’t be fixed if you knew the right people. He asked me a lot of questions about Milton and he kept saying I could tell him everything. He was my friend and he was going to help us, Milton and me. He knew the right people.”
“Then Miss Sylvester came and joined you,” Gibby said. “Did he say she was the right people?”
“He said she was a friend of Ellie’s, except that he called Ellie Sydney and Miss Sylvester called her that, too. He left the table again and went to the back. Miss Sylvester said she hated bars. She said she hated them particularly when she didn’t have a man with her. Two women alone in a bar, it would be only a matter of time before some drunk would be getting fresh. She said we could go to her place. We could talk better there.”
“What about the guy who brought you?” Gibby asked. “Didn’t you think you should have waited for him?”
“He was gone so long and when I said we ought to wait for him, she said he would come around to her place. He had gone away for a while. There had been something he had to do. She said it was something he had to do for me. I asked her what, but she said I wasn’t to worry. They were taking care of everything.”
“What made you trust these people?” Gibby asked. “You hadn’t met any of them before. They were strangers, or so you say.”
“They were strangers, but they had been Ellie’s friends. There were all sorts of things they told me about Milt and myself that they couldn’t possibly have known unless Ellie had been their friend and had told them about us. It wasn’t that I really trusted them. I was desperate and I was terribly, terribly mistaken. I had no choice, I thought. Things were so bad and I hadn’t the first idea of how soon it would be that you would know about me because of the fingerprints. They said you’d been lying to me when you said you wanted my prints only for identification because I’d been staying there with Ellie. They said you could tell from where you’d find the prints just which ones were from my having stayed there and which showed what I had been doing there after Ellie was killed. I was grasping at straws. Things were so bad that I couldn’t see how they could be any worse.”
“So you went with her?”
The rest of it was as we had already had it from Bannerman. She had gone with Mabel Sylvester to this fine house in the East Fifties. The woman had let them in with her key. There had been no one about, no servants or anyone else. Miss Sylvester had talked to her and urged her to tell everything. The line had been that they had to know everything she had done and everything Milton had done if they were going to be of any help.
She had only talked a little before they were interrupted by the ringing of the doorbell. Miss Sylvester had gone down to open the door. It had been Milton and he had demanded to see Joan. Miss Sylvester had asked him in. After that she had talked to the two of them.
“That was when Milton found out,” the girl said.
It must have been quite a scene. The Sylvester woman told him flatly that it was no good lying to her. She knew that he had killed his sister. He had denied it hotly. He loved his sister. He had been both mother and father to her. He had been more than a brother. Miss Sylvester had laughed in his face. She had told him straight out what his precious Ellie had been doing, and at that point Milton had blown his top.
“At first he wouldn’t believe her,” Joan Loomis moaned. “Then he began saying all those things he’s been saying to you. He said he would have killed Ellie himself if he had known and she pounced on it and said that he had killed Ellie. She knew all about it. Heaven forgive me. I believed her.”
It had been at that point that Milton Bannerman had washed his hands of everything, including in everything his sister’s memory. He was ready to take Joan out of there and go straight back home to River Forks with her. Mabel Sylvester had stopped him in his tracks. She’d told him what choices he had. He could let her help him, and maybe she could fix everything. He could go to the police and confess or he could do as he said he was going to do and see Joan arrested for his sister’s murder. She told him what Joan had done in Ellie’s apartment.
“She told him how you were going to know because of my fingerprints,” Joan said, and now the girl was white and shaking.
It wasn’t only that scene that she was finding so hard to describe. It was more what she next had to tell us. There had been a second interruption, again the doorbell. They had been in an upstairs sitting room and Mabel Sylvester had left them up there while she went down to answer the bell. She hadn’t returned. They had waited and waited and then they had gone downstairs to look for her. They had found her. It was the same story as we had already had from Milton Bannerman except that Joan wasn’t pretending that they had only just discovered the body at the time when we had arrived. There had been some time in between. She didn’t know just how long because she had been terrified and minutes could have seemed like hours.
They had taken out their handkerchiefs and had begun wiping. They had wiped the railings of the stairs and the doorknobs of the upstairs room. They had gone about that room, wiping everything. They’d had no memory of what they had touched and what they hadn’t, but they had wiped everything just to be certain.
“You were profiting by your mistake in Ellie’s apartment,” Gibby said.
“I couldn’t even think,” the girl answered. “I was sick with fear and horror and I was happy, too, because then I knew. I knew how mistaken I had been. It hadn’t been Milton at all because Milton was upstairs with me all the time. She went down to answer the bell and we waited for her and when we went down we went down together and she looked just like Ellie had looked, so it couldn’t have been Milton. He said we had to wipe everything clean and I did what he said. I was through with thinking. I had been such a complete fool.”
“Yes,” Gibby said. “Milton was smarter. He knew about fingerprints. You may not know it but the reason why we had it so easy spotting your fingerprints in the apartment was because before you went around the place touching things yesterday morning,
the slate had been wiped clean. Everything had been wiped before you got there, just the kind of job Milton had you do with him here after Mabel Sylvester had been killed. Even in that respect this killing is a duplicate of his sister’s murder.”
“But he was upstairs with me,” Joan screamed. She saw the closing trap and she was trying to claw her way out of it.
“We have only your word for it,” Gibby said. “Do you think that’s going to be enough? After all, it’s only the word of a girl who thinks anything goes so long as she can save pure, unsullied Milton Bannerman.”
“You must believe me,” the girl said.
“Who’s going to make a jury believe you?” Gibby asked. “The wages of sin are death and, boy, has this been pay day! Ellie, the sinner, was killed in her bed and she hadn’t been looking at television when she died. The set had been turned on twenty-four hours before you came down from Boston and it had been turned on to screen any noise that might have been made while the place was being wiped clean of all prints. But Ellie was only the beginning. Ellie had really been something when she was alive. She had been the girl who kept knocking them dead. Look at Mr. Jellicoe here with his bit of red lace to remember her by. So the sinner was killed, but that wasn’t enough. There were the men who led her into sin. There was Harry and he got it just as he came out of his shower. He never even got the soap out of his eyes before the strangler’s hands closed around his throat. You can’t alibi Milton for that one. You were on your own then with a man you picked up in the station. Then you were in the bar with that man and Milton was outside and Mabel Sylvester came along in her car. She parked it not out front but down the alley. She parked it there for George because that wasn’t a healthy street for him, not with so many police around. George had telephoned her to tell her that the police were clustered around Harry’s place and that he had you in the bar down the street. He didn’t know that Milton was lying in wait outside the bar.”
“He wasn’t lying in wait,” Joan protested. “He was following us, worrying about me.”
“His story and your story. A jury will have to choose between that story and this one I’m telling you. Milton was lying in wait outside. His sinful sister had come to her just deserts. One of her procurers had come to his just down the street. Now Milton was watching the other procurer and Mabel Sylvester had the good sense to be worried. She was worried about George because it looked very much as though something had happened to Harry and what had happened to Harry could happen to George. She may not have known whether it was murder or merely a Vice Squad raid, but she would worry about either. If it was murder again, then she had further worries. There was Mr. Jellicoe, their best client. Wasn’t he in danger? Wasn’t she in danger herself? She was a brave woman. She told George to get out of town. She told him she would come around in her car and leave it in the alley for him. She told him to take the car and get out of town, go up to Westport and stay with Jellicoe. He would be safe there from New York’s Vice Squad if it was that and if it was the other, pay day for the wages of sin, he could watch over Jellicoe and Jellicoe could watch over him. Meanwhile she would see what she could find out from this girl.”
I was way ahead of the story at this point because, after all, I had been up in Westport with Gibby. I had been there when the rock had smashed against his head. I could still feel the strangler’s fingers on my throat. George had been in the bar. Milton had been waiting outside. On his own admission he had seen Mabel Sylvester come out of the alley. George had taken the car and driven to Westport but he hadn’t known that he had a passenger crouched down in back. He hadn’t known it till they had reached the Jellicoe place and the fingers had closed around his throat. The rest followed simply enough. George had died. The Westport cop, of course, had been only incidental. The killer’s work had still to be finished and we’d come along at a time when we might have stopped him with the last of his work undone. He took the red sedan from Jellicoe’s garage, drove back to New York, parked it at the end of the subway line, took the subway downtown, and killed the procuress.
Gibby turned to Jellicoe. “That leaves only you,” he said.
“Gee,” Jellicoe muttered. “Why me?”
“You’re the man who corrupted Ellie Bannerman,” Gibby said.
“That’s a lie. We had our parties. I’m not denying it, but I wasn’t the first. I’ve only known her for a month or a little more. She had been there before.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Gibby said. “But when it’s pay day, there aren’t these fine distinctions. The man who first corrupted Ellie Bannerman came and went years ago. That must have been some time shortly after she came to New York, but you did enjoy her favors. Look at her brother. He’s ready to kill you. In his mind adultery is adultery and there are no distinctions.”
“Just because the kid was enjoying her life?” Jellicoe bleated.
“It’s all a matter of what your standards are,” Gibby told him. “You think nothing is as important as enjoying yourself. He thinks nothing is as important as righteousness and virtue. He would kill his sister because she hadn’t refused her favors. You would kill her because she had refused them.”
“She was a good kid,” Jellicoe muttered. “She was more fun than a parcel of monkeys.”
“We know she never refused you,” Gibby continued. “It’s a great pity that you had been drinking with her and you couldn’t understand when she told you that you were going to have to stay away because her brother was coming to town. You didn’t mean to hurt her, but you didn’t understand what she was saying and you started choking her and you choked her too much.”
“You just said he killed her,” Jellicoe shouted. “He killed all the others. You just been showing how he did it.”
“I’ve been showing how he could have done it. You killed Sydney Bell and then you went running in a panic to your friends—Mae and George and Harry. They were going to fix it for you. They knew how. They could fix anything for a price. They asked you if after the killing you had thought to wipe away fingerprints. You hadn’t, of course. They went to the apartment and they wiped it clean. They did all the careful things you didn’t have the brains to do for yourself. They even clipped her fingernails right down to the quick and beyond so that we couldn’t find any scrapings under them since they would be scrapings of you. They didn’t tell you anything or ask you to do any part of it. You were just to leave it to them and do as they told you and you were to pay.”
“Look,” Jellicoe protested. “Just because I laid her. That’s all I ever did. I laid her.”
“It started that way. Then you killed her and they were taking care of it. But they knew you. You were a sentimental slob and they weren’t taking any chances on your doing something silly that would give it all away. They watched you and they watched the apartment. George was watching the apartment when Miss Loomis got there. He thought that would bring the police and when it didn’t, they knew she could be worth watching as well. The time could come when it might be possible to put it on her or at least to make some profitable use of her and of the silly things she was doing to screen Bannerman. Then you were just as silly as they’d expected you’d be. You bought the nightgown. They took you in tow and they got you to a quiet place where the two of them could work you over and get it away from you. That wasn’t a fight. It was a beating. They were teaching you that you would not only have to pay but that you would have to stay in line as well. You got away from them then, but it wasn’t enough. Staying in line wasn’t going to be any fun and what is life if there isn’t fun in it? Meanwhile you had learned something or you thought you had. You thought you could kill and get away with it. All you had to do was remember to wear gloves for it or wipe off fingerprints if you couldn’t manage gloves. You didn’t know there could be a million other things you’d have to watch. You were never going to have any fun again or any freedom ever as long as George and Mae and Harry were alive. You started after them. First you went to Harry’s and got him. Then you went
after Mae. You were the passenger crouched down in the back of Mae’s car when she drove around to the bar. You were waiting for a chance to get at her but you couldn’t while she was driving busy streets. Then George took the car over. He didn’t drive busy streets. He drove up to Westport because they had to find you before you did any other silly things. Something had happened to Harry and whatever it was, it was dangerous, and they had to find you. You saw where he was heading and you let him take you all the way. He was taking you to just the spot you would have chosen for yourself. You killed George. You were making certain he was dead when we came along. We were in your way and you went after us. You got the cop but you fumbled me and you fumbled Mac. You smashed the lock on your own garage door and you took your own red sedan and drove back to New York. Then you came down here and you finished the job. You got Mae. You thought you were being clever coming around here to look for your car. You weren’t clever enough.”
“Look,” Jellicoe argued. “I’m not smart. Anybody can tell you I’m not smart. I’m not smart enough to do any of this stuff. I can’t even understand it when you’re telling it. Him, now. He’s smart and it’s like you said. He’s got a reason.”
“Brother, you aren’t smart,” Gibby told him. “You aren’t even as smart as you think you are. You weren’t smart enough to clip Harry’s fingernails close, not even after he’d tried for your face after your doctor had changed the fastenings on your dressings to Scotch tape because he thought adhesive tape wasn’t becoming. You weren’t smart enough to think that Scotch tape will chip off and cling under a man’s nails. We found a bit under Harry’s. You see, you needed them to clean up after you. You were no good at cleaning up after yourself. You did it again up in Westport. You smashed the lock on your garage but the wood isn’t splintered inward or outward as it would have to be if you had forced the door. You did it the easy way. You opened the door with your key and you took a rock to the lock and smashed it then. You smashed downward on it. The wood is splintered in that direction and it couldn’t be unless the door was opened before the lock was smashed. You weren’t smart enough to know how to get rid of your blood-spattered clothes after you killed that cop and half killed Mac and me. You went up to the house and changed into completely fresh clothes and you took the stuff you’d been wearing—it was all brown and yellow to match your convertible and I suppose you don’t have a red and chromium suit to match the sedan—you took it outside and set fire to it. You weren’t smart enough to know that clothes are hard to burn. There will be scraps left with blood on them. Just because they made such a smoky fire, you thought they were burning fine. We would have found them long ago if it hadn’t been that you had half killed us, and when we came to and were coughing like crazy with the smoke, we were still too muzzy to wonder what was burning to make all that smoke.”
The Girl Who Kept Knocking Them Dead Page 19