“Miss Sanderson, this is Detective Kilkenny of the police department,” said Miss Smith. “Miss Sanderson is one of our phantom secretaries.”
“How do you do?”
“Mr. Kilkenny would like to talk to you for a few minutes. I’ll take your board.”
“No,” said Kilkenny, canceling the order with smiling, but inexorable authority. “I’ll talk to Miss Sanderson between calls, if I may. Won’t disrupt your efficiency, will it, Miss Sanderson?”
“This is a rather quiet time,” Miss Smith answered for her. “Just after office closing is really our busiest period.”
“I’ve often wondered how these phone-answering systems worked,” said Detective Kilkenny, continuing to seem unconcerned and casually friendly.
He was too friendly, Vivian thought. He was going to try to trap her, and she was terrified he might succeed. She hoped she didn’t look as terrified as she felt. She wondered how much he knew and how much she was going to be able to conceal successfully.
“You’re a cousin of Mrs. Penelope Dunne’s, I believe,” said Detective Kilkenny, taking the chair that Miss Smith brought. He turned it around and straddled it, with his arms folded across the back.
“Yes, I am.” Vivian’s expression was alarmed. She didn’t have to pretend, either. She was plenty alarmed. “Has—has anything happened to Pen?”
“Mrs. Dunne’s in good health,” said Kilkenny. “Did—”
“Then it’s Tony? Has Tony done something again?”
“Who’s Tony?”
“Anthony Grove. He’s my cousin, too. He’s Pen’s brother.”
“Oh, yes. Well, I can’t say about your cousin Tony. He sort of dropped out of sight temporarily.”
“Is that why you came here to see me—about Tony?” Vivian asked quickly.
“Yes, part that. How long since you went to see your cousin Mrs. Dunne, Miss Sanderson?”
“Just a moment, please,” Vivian replied. Two signal lights were gleaming. She was glad of the interruption, glad to gather her wits before embarking on the lie that Barney had coached her to tell. Her heart was beating furiously as she attacked both the lights with the dummy jack. The lights stayed out. Both subscribers were home. Vivian turned back to the detective. She smiled.
“I called on cousin Pen just this afternoon,” she said, “but nobody was home.”
“About what time was this?”
“Five-thirty,” said Vivian. “Little before, maybe.”
“And nobody was home at Mrs. Dunne’s?”
“Nobody,” said Vivian. “I rang several times, and when nobody opened the door, I went back down.” Vivian wished one of the lamps would flash—any lamp. She was cold inside for fear that Detective Kilkenny would see through her falsehood. She was an unconvincing liar, she knew, and she was sure the detective could tell she was lying—although he was still calm and courteous and unchallenging.
“The elevator boy doesn’t remember taking you down,” he said quietly.
“I guess I have a better memory than he has,” Vivian said. She began to feel brazen about it. After all, it was Barney’s idea. “I remember his taking me down. There was a man waiting on the ground floor, and he got in just as I got out; a man from our home town—a Mr. Weaver.”
“I’ve heard of Mr. Weaver.” Kilkenny nodded. “Didn’t you suppose he was going to Mrs. Dunne’s, too?”
“Yes, I did suppose so.”
“Why didn’t you tell him Mrs. Dunne wasn’t home?” Detective Kilkenny asked.
“I’m not speaking to Barney Weaver,” she said. She didn’t feel so badly about that one because it was almost true. She hoped Barney didn’t call now while the detective was sitting there. “We had a fight. He wanted to marry me. I turned him down.”
Again the detective nodded. Vivian began to wish he would be just a little bit suspicious. This complete and credulous acceptance of everything she said was not at all reassuring. She was glad when a light signaled for her attention. This time she did not excuse herself as she turned away from Detective Kilkenny.
“Colonel Greene’s residence,” she said into the phone. “I’m sorry. Colonel Greene isn’t at home, but I can—Long-distance? Yes, operator. Is this a person-to-person call?” Her fingers were flipping back the cards of the flat index. “Then you’d better hold on just a moment. I’m sure I can reach him for you.” The dial whirred briskly on an outgoing line. “Hello, Colonel Greene? I have a Washington call for you.” She made a new pattern with the crisscrossed drop cords, and turned back to the detective with a smile that said her attention was only half his.
“While you were ringing the bell,” Kilkenny asked, “did you hear Mrs. Dunne’s dogs barking in the apartment?”
“Not that I recall.”
“They usually bark at strangers?”
“On the contrary. They’re quite indifferent to strangers. They only bark at Pen’s friends. Jealousy, probably. If you’re a very good friend, they may even bite you. And they’re very hard on stockings, the nasty little beasts. Pen thinks it’s very amusing—Just a moment.”
Automatically Vivian turned to break the connections on the Washington call. She took care of another light that was flashing a question. And she wondered if she had given herself away. Detective Kilkenny, she noted, had not yet told her the purpose of his visit. She was therefore not supposed to know that Pierre Laurence had been killed in Pen’s apartment. She must continue to be careful.
“Why do you ask about the dogs?” she demanded innocently. “Have Ping and Pong been getting into trouble again?”
“Well, no,” said the detective. “What I’m really getting at is Mrs. Dunne’s husband. You know him?”
“Yes, I know Roger.”
“What’s his racket?”
“He sells glass eyes for animals,” Vivian said. Detective Kilkenny’s head went back and a little to one side. He looked at the girl along the ridge of his nose. For the first time he showed signs of not believing her. He gave her a thin smile of amused incredulity.
“Glass eyes for the Pekinese, probably,” he said.
“Oh, no. He has quite an important business. He makes eyes for taxidermists and museums and furriers and toy manufacturers all over the country.”
“That’s not what he told me,” said the detective. “He said he was in the novelty business.”
“He usually says that. People kid him a lot about making artificial eyes for stuffed birds and things.”
“How long have he and Mrs. Dunne been separated?”
“This last time about a year,” the girl answered. “But they’ve been separated before. The marriage never did work out very well.”
“They’re not divorced?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Dunne says they’d patched it up again; says he was moving back to Riverside Drive. What about that?”
“I hadn’t heard about it,” Vivian said. “But it’s quite possibly true, because—” She broke off suddenly.
“Because why?” the detective asked gently.
“I’m afraid I shouldn’t have said that. I was on the point of violating a professional confidence.”
Detective Kilkenny shoved a cigarette into his mouth but did not light it. “I see,” he said. “I know that you people here answer Mrs. Dunne’s phone when she’s not home. That’s no secret. Has Dunne been getting calls there?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
“Well, that’s all right. I’ll get a release on that from Mrs. Dunne. She won’t mind. She told me about that message last night.”
“What message?” Vivian was trying very hard to be casual, to keep that choking sensation from rising in her throat. Remember he hasn’t told you yet, she thought; you don’t know why he’s here.
“You remember. That man who phoned and advised Mrs. Dunne to leave town for a few days because something pretty fatal was going to happen to her white-haired boy?”
“Oh, that. That was just a joke, Pen
said.”
“It wasn’t a joke.”
“Oh, but it must have been.” Here it comes. Keep your chin protected.
“It wasn’t a joke,” the detective repeated. His voice rasped for the first time, and a steely glint came into his eyes. “You know it wasn’t a joke, Miss Sanderson, and I think you know why.”
“I?” Vivian shook her head. She was the picture of bewilderment, and it was not an act, either. What shade of astonishment should she show when the revelation came? Her thoughts refused to crystallize. She wished Barney hadn’t insisted that she cling to this fiction. It would have been so much simpler to tell the truth.
“Sure, you,” said Detective Kilkenny. “You know a man was killed in Mrs. Dunne’s apartment this afternoon.”
Vivian’s lips parted, but no sound came.
“And his name was Pierre Laurence,” the detective pursued.
“Oh, no!” The intonation was a failure. It was no use. She could not get any astonishment into it. She was a rotten actress. All she could express was fear.
“You don’t seem surprised. You sound pleased, even.”
“How can you say that? It’s horrible. But I was relieved to hear it was no one I cared about.”
“You didn’t care much for this Laurence?”
“Not at all.”
“Did Mrs. Dunne?”
“I can’t say. Probably she did at one time. They used to see quite a bit of one another.”
“Was she in love with him?”
“I don’t know. She doesn’t confide her emotional states to me. She’s only my cousin, after all.”
“It’s true, isn’t it, that Laurence gave her the brush-off about a month or so ago, and that she’s been trying to get him back?”
“I don’t know. I believe Pen has been seeing a lot less of him recently, but I’m sure I don’t know what their private understanding was.”
“Is Roger Dunne a jealous man?”
“How should I know? He wasn’t my husband.”
“I know, I know. Just make a guess.”
“I should guess that if Roger Dunne was jealous, Penelope certainly gave him plenty of chance to get over it.”
“Then you think that Dunne might have killed Laurence out of jealousy—because he broke up his home, say?”
“I don’t think anything of the sort. I don’t know. I haven’t any way of finding out. I don’t know why you ask me that, anyhow. I don’t know a thing about what happened.”
Detective Kilkenny removed the unlighted cigarette from his mouth, thoughtfully broke it in two, and tossed it in the general direction of a wastebasket across the room. He gave Vivian a faint, thin-lipped smile that seemed to be half admiration for keeping her guard up, half promise that he was going to break it down. He said, “Then you think that Mrs. Dunne killed Laurence herself because he wouldn’t come back to her?”
“I think you’re asking very silly questions.” Vivian was feeling herself again, now that she had got over the hump. Or was she over it yet?
“That’s not so silly,” the detective countered. “It wouldn’t be the first time that a woman killed a man for walking out on her.”
“My cousin is certainly smart enough to know better than to kill a man right in her own apartment,” Vivian said.
“Maybe,” the detective agreed. “Maybe she’s so smart she knows that’s exactly what a defense attorney would tell the jury. Say, you people have the record of that call about the white-haired boy, haven’t you? With the exact time, and all that?”
“We keep the record slips until they’re sent for. Mrs. Dunne sent for hers this morning.”
“She says she didn’t,” the detective said. “She gave me written authorization to pick them up.”
“They were picked up by a Western Union messenger boy just before noon. He signed for them. He said he had instructions to take them to three hundred sixty-nine Riverside Drive, Apartment fourteen-A. That’s Pen’s address.”
“Funny,” Kilkenny mused. “Damn funny.”
“Just a moment, please,” Vivian said. A light was gleaming insistently over an outside trunk line. Her fingers hesitated just the fraction of a second before she plugged in. She was afraid she knew who was calling from outside. She was right. When she answered, Barney recognized her voice instantly.
“Hello, Vivian,” he said, and his voice was vibrant, taut with excitement. “Can you talk to me?”
Vivian looked around at Detective Kilkenny. He was apparently not looking at her. He seemed to be watching the girl at the next panel. So Vivian was sure that he was listening carefully to every word she might say.
XII
AFTER PENELOPE DUNNE HAD LEFT the Frye chateau, Julia Frye stood at the window on the third floor, gripping the velvet drapes, watching the police car go down the street and turn into Madison Avenue. She closed her eyes, drew a deep breath, pressed her lips tightly together, tried to suppress a shudder. Then she walked directly to the bathroom and banged on the door.
“You can come out now, Tom,” she said curtly. “The cops have gone.”
The door opened instantly. Tom Norfolk’s face was the color of brick dust. It was always pretty pink—the same color as his ears and the back of his neck—but tonight it seemed ruddier than ever.
“I wasn’t hiding,” he said. “I had a legitimate—”
“Yes, I understand.” Julia’s voice was dry and brittle, her face masklike. “Are we going to Connecticut anyhow? We can say we broke down. We can fake a punctured tire.”
“Let’s not go to Connecticut,” Tom said.
“Shall I phone the airport to ask when the next plane leaves for Montreal?”
“No.”
“Mexico?”
“Mexico’s no good. Nothing is any good now. Siberia wouldn’t be far enough. We can’t get away from it.”
Tom came two steps nearer. He looked into her eyes with a long, frightening, unblinking, soul-searching stare. She lowered her gaze. Her long lashes were very black against the pallor of her cheeks.
“Get away from what, Tom?” she asked.
“From the facts. From ourselves.”
The long lashes lifted. There was a glimmer of hope in the gray eyes. “We can pretend to get away,” she said. “We can get stinko together.”
“You’re already higher than six kites.”
“I’m not high any more. What Penelope just said cut the altitude right out from under me. Please let’s get tight together, Tom.”
“You can’t stay tight for the rest of your life, you know.”
“I know, Tom. But tonight let’s forget everything that’s happened for the last two months. Let’s not even talk about it until we’ve had a few drinks. Promise?”
Tom stared at her for a moment. Then he took her arm. “Come on,” he said.
Neither of them spoke again until they were rolling down Park Avenue toward the great towering fortress of the New York Central building.
“Go over the ramp,” Julia said. “Keep going. Let’s start in the Village. Let’s make every bistro. We can start up the West side and come down the East Side, bar by bar.”
“Skipping those that don’t serve Graingold products,” Tom amended.
They tunneled through the New York Central building, swung around the upper floors of the Grand Central station, dipped down into the underpass. The underground echoes of the tunnel had just begun to din in their ears when Julia laid her hand on Tom’s arm.
“Mind if I change signals, Tom?” She raised her voice to be heard above the magnified roar of motors that the tunnel walls hurled at them.
“Now what?”
“I don’t think I could survive more than two bars tonight. I don’t think I could stand the noise and the smoke and the people laughing and shaking their behinds to music as if they wanted to get the imprint of bar stools out of their skirts. I think I’d scream, Tom.”
“Okay,” Tom said. “Where do we go? Public library?”
�
�Let’s get tight all by ourselves. Can’t we go up to your place—to the Graingold Stratosphere Room?”
It seems that they could. The Society of Autobiographical Journalists was being entertained by the firm that afternoon, but the last of the autobiographers should have been trundled out long ere this; and the Mt. Blatsford Beagles, who were scheduled to be imbued en masse with the fine quality of Graingold liquors that night, had postponed their free drunk for two weeks. So they had the Stratosphere Room to themselves.
They had the whole sixtieth floor of the skyscraper to themselves, in fact, together with most of forty or fifty other floors. If it was solitude Julia was seeking, she had made a fine choice, for there are few places in which a person can feel more solitary than the upper altitudes of a skyscraper at night. Only the distant clank of a pail being set down somewhere told of a charwoman sharing their silence.
The Stratosphere Room, with its great circular bar, its club furniture, its huge windows looking down on the city, was dark when they entered, yet there was enough light from the glow of the city to illuminate the murals. There was enough to drink by, too, Julia insisted. She also insisted that neither say anything until they had had two drinks apiece. She dreaded the subject which both had avoided since they left her house, yet they had to talk about it sometime.
They sat in leather chairs next to the window. Julia looked at the garish lights of the city and their reflections on the rain-draped bellies of the low-lying clouds. The clouds were so close she felt that if the windows were open she could lean out and touch them.
Tom Norfolk didn’t look at the clouds. He watched every tiny change in expression in Julia’s face. The play of light across it, the multicolored glow from the distant neon signs and street lights, made her look more than ever like a stylized, unreal portrait of someone he had known once but whose name he couldn’t quite remember.
See You at the Morgue Page 9