The April Robin Murders

by Craig Rice

  Sunset Boulevard curved into what the guidebook described as “the truly magnificent part of the city where most of the stars live—” A little way beyond, Bingo spotted a tiny stand, nothing more than a table and a few yards of bunting, with a pennant reading: GET YOUR GUIDE TO MOVIE STARS’ HOMES RIGHT HERE—$1.00.

  “That’s the place Mrs. DeLee told us about,” Bingo said. “Pull up, Handsome.”

  A plump middle-aged woman in slacks was perched on a stool behind the stand, which was heaped with folded maps. A man was leaning on the stand, apparently idly chatting. He looked up as the convertible came to a stop, said to the woman, “Don’t get up, Florence,” walked over to the convertible and beamed amiably.

  “Want to see the movie stars’ homes, h’m? You came to the right place. Tourists?”

  “We’re moving our business out here,” Bingo said. He tried to say it curtly, doing his best to feel irritated and just a bit insulted but there was no resisting the stranger’s smile. He reached in his wallet, took out a card of the International Foto, Motion Picture and Television Corporation of America: New York and Hollywood, and handed it over.

  “Glad to know you,” the stranger said. “I’m Courtney Budlong. Dabble in real estate, though I keep talking about retiring.” He scrutinized the card, and Bingo suddenly was glad he’d gone to the expense of having them engraved. “Well, you’ve certainly come to the right place. Cigarette?”

  “Thanks,” Bingo said, glowing.

  “Oh, your map,” Courtney Budlong said. He took Bingo’s dollar and turned back to the stand.

  Bingo looked him over curiously. He was a plumpish man of medium height, with silvery gray hair—a trifle thin, bright blue eyes, a round, pink face, and a smile that somehow reminded Bingo of the smiles on the Santa Clauses who used to visit the orphanage where he’d lived until his Uncle Herman took him out at the age of twelve. It was a warm smile, a friendly smile, one that asked nothing in return except, perhaps, another smile. Later, Handsome remarked that he reminded him of the second husband of his Aunt Sophie, the one who lived in Scranton and owned the grocery store.

  He wore a conservative, but still natty, light tan suit, just slightly and informally wrinkled but looking as though it had been pressed that morning, a white shirt with a button-down collar, a necktie striped in two soft shades of blue, and a Panama hat, the first hat Bingo had seen in three days. His gold cuff links and tie pin were initialed, chastely, C.B.

  “Here you are, boys,” he said cordially, leaning an elbow on the car door. He nodded toward the stand. “Like to drop by here now and then and pass the time of day with old Florence. She’s a character, boys, a real true character. Been here fifty years, and what she can’t tell you about this town!” He clucked deprecatingly and shook his head. “Knows just everything that goes on, believe me!” He winked as one successful businessman to another. “Tips me off to some smart real estate deals, too.”

  From Courtney Budlong’s clothes, appearance and manner, Bingo was sure the deals had paid off well.

  “First trip to the coast?” Courtney Budlong asked, sounding as though he’d been appointed as a one-man greeters’ committee.

  Bingo was tempted to make some casual quick reference to “flying business trips but never any time to look around,” but checked himself firmly. “First trip,” he said, and he said it with enthusiasm.

  “Well!” Courtney Budlong said. “If you don’t love it here already, you’ll learn to. Say—” A sudden thought lighted up his round, friendly face. “How about my showing you around this little neck of the woods? I know it like I know my old mother’s face! Why, I can tell you things the boys who write the guidebooks never even dreamed of! You won’t need that map—but don’t take it back, Florence needs the buck.”

  “That’s nice of you, mister,” Handsome said, warmth in his voice. “But—”

  “We wouldn’t dream of taking up your time like that,” Bingo said, hoping he’d be overruled.

  He promptly was. “Stuff and nonsense,” their new friend said. “I don’t have a thing to do all afternoon, not one thing. That’s why I was down fanning the breeze with my old friend Florence. Have to be at a dinner down at the Biltmore tonight, but that’s not till six-thirty. It would be a real pleasure to me, believe me, boys.”

  “Well—” Handsome said.

  “We’d enjoy it,” Bingo said, putting it mildly.

  “Fine, boys!” Courtney Budlong said. “Fine, fine. Shall we take your car, or mine?”

  He nodded toward a driveway about twenty feet up the boulevard, where a handsome Continental Mark II was parked.

  “Still,” he said as an afterthought, “might as well take yours, and let you get the hang of driving around these tricky little streets. You may be living on one of them yourselves one of these days.” He climbed in beside Bingo, crowding them very slightly, and slammed the door.

  “As a matter of fact,” Bingo said, “we plan to.” Well, that was the honest truth. He just didn’t say when they planned to. “To tell the truth about it—” Under Courtney Budlong’s warm friendliness he felt himself unfolding. “When we do buy a house,” he confided, “I want to buy one that once belonged to a movie star. That may sound childish to you, but it’s an old boyhood ambition of mine.”

  “Not childish at all,” Courtney Budlong said sympathetically. “I once bought a Packard just because it had belonged to Theda Bara. Almost twenty years old when I bought it, and it was the best car I ever owned.”

  Not only a cordial friend, Bingo thought, but a kindred spirit.

  “Now around this next bend—” Courtney Budlong said. “Say, turn right here on Baroda. I want you to see Gary Cooper’s new house. Magnificent, isn’t it? And look ahead at that view! Talk about available building lots!”

  “Very pretty,” Bingo said noncommittally. He wanted to see movie stars’ homes.

  “Take a left here,” their volunteer guide said.

  A few minutes later he said, “Straight ahead now, across Sunset.”

  Sculptured lawns, clipped hedges and definitely palatial houses began to flow together in Bingo’s mind.

  “Pelargoniums,” Courtney Budlong said, pointing to an expanse of pale but probably expensive flowers.

  “Nice,” Bingo said. He hadn’t come all the way from New York to admire flowers.

  “And there, across Sunset, right where we’re heading, is Lana Turner’s house. Right beyond—”

  Now names began to flow through Bingo’s mind, replacing the verdure and the architecture. Lana Turner. Lauren Bacall. Judy Garland.

  “But just look at the space around these houses,” Courtney Budlong said. “You won’t see anything like that in New York. Why, back East, to have even a little hint of a garden runs into a fortune of money! Here,” he said, almost reverently, “here, people have estates!”

  “That’s the sort of place we’re going to want,” Bingo said, half without thinking.

  Before he could add “someday,” their new friend had patted him on the shoulder and said, “There’s a house you ought to see. Not only outside, but inside.”

  Bingo drew a long breath. “That, I’d like,” he said. He’d seen mansions, he’d seen landscaped gardens, he knew now where Lana Turner, and Judy Garland, and a dozen others lived. But to see the inside of such a house—

  “Could it be arranged?” he asked, almost timidly.

  “Arranged!” Courtney Budlong said. “Easiest thing in the world. The house is empty, and I have the keys to it right in my pocket.” He leaned toward Handsome. “Turn left at the second street up.”

  Bingo half closed his eyes. If it was anything like Lana Turner’s house, or Gary Cooper’s, or any of the others he’d seen, this alone was going to be worth the trip from New York.

  “There’s quite a story to this house,” Courtney Budlong said confidentially. “It has no business being empty. You’ll be able to guess, looking at it, what it cost to build. Why, what the ground it stands on is wort
h! If I told you what a mere building lot is worth, in this neighborhood, you wouldn’t believe me!”

  “I suppose it’s for sale,” Bingo said.

  “It is,” Courtney Budlong said, “and that’s why I happen to have the keys to it. I don’t even dare tell you how little the price is, because you wouldn’t believe that either. If I had time to handle it properly on the market, I could get ten times what’s being asked. If I only had ten days or so, I could get five times what’s being asked.” He sighed deeply. “But that’s the way things go in this world. It’s a forced sale. Somebody is going to get the bargain of a lifetime!”

  Bingo opened his mouth to say that they weren’t in the position, right now, to consider buying a chicken coop. But the chance of seeing the inside of one of the houses he’d been looking at was a little too good to miss. He said modestly, “It wouldn’t do any harm to look—”

  “Turn in right here,” Courtney Budlong said.

  Handsome turned obediently through the gateway and into a U-shaped driveway, slightly littered with leaves, twigs and wastepaper, which curved around a rather unkempt lawn. At the far end of it stood what, at first glance, seemed to be more a castle than a mere mansion. Built of gray stone, it rose three stories high, with a pointed tower to the left, and a battlemented terrace to the right. From the driveway, it looked enormous; it hadn’t grown any smaller when they pulled up in front of an ornate doorway that would easily have admitted an eight-foot man without difficulty.

  “This,” Courtney Budlong proclaimed, “is a house!”

  It was all of that and more, Bingo decided. Their guide fished a key ring from his pocket, found the right one, swung the big carved wood door open, and ushered them inside.

  It was dark in the entrance hall, but Bingo could dimly make out that its size was in keeping with the rest of the building, and that there were doors on either side of him and one ahead of him.

  “Coat closet,” Courtney Budlong explained, opening the door to the left. He opened the one to the right and said, “Informal bar. Both for incoming guests.”

  The informal bar for incoming guests had once been something very special, Bingo thought. Now it was almost empty of furnishings, dusty, and even a little cobwebby. The hospitable little curved bar, of some exotic wood, was badly in need of polishing; behind it, a South Seas mural needed a little touching up. There was one bamboo and wicker stool leaning against the wall.

  “Island motif,” Courtney Budlong said. “Was charming. Could be, again.” He coughed and added, “Of course, everything’s a little run down.” He spoke as apologetically as though he personally had forgotten to push the lawn mower, sweep out the driveway, and dust the informal bar for incoming guests.

  “But here,” he said, with a tone almost of triumph, “is the main room.” He threw open the door with an air of pride.

  Bingo blinked. The main room was vastly larger than any room he had ever seen, or even imagined, in a private home. His first impression was that it closely resembled Grand Central Terminal. Across from him was a fireplace, done in black marble. It, too, seemed enormous.

  The room was vast, and nearly empty. On either side of the fireplace were davenports, chastely done up in dust covers. Between them was what was evidently a coffee table, now neatly covered with yellowed newspapers. There were two dejected-looking floor lamps. Dust marks on the wall showed where pictures had once been, and that was all.

  “The furniture is all in storage,” Courtney Budlong said, “except for a few items not worth storing.” He cleared his throat. “The furniture, of course, goes with the house. I’ll simply call the storage company and tell them to send it over. All antiques, too, beautiful stuff. The paintings, too, of course, and boxes of linens and silver.”

  It was going to take a lot of furniture to fill up this room, Bingo thought. He walked halfway into the room. The davenports and table were standard size, he could see, but in here they seemed like doll furniture.

  “This room,” Courtney Budlong said, as proudly as though he’d built it himself, “is one hundred feet square. Why, that’s twice the size of the average building lot. And three stories high. It goes all the way up to the roof.” Bingo looked up at the ceiling. It seemed very far away. On either side of the black marble fireplace, French doors led to somewhere. A wide hall turned off to one side of the room, another smaller one to the left. To the left also, a staircase with an ornate balustrade ran up to a balcony that apparently connected the right and left sides of the mansion. Its railing had the same ornate carving, and there were three doors on the other side of it.

  “The rest of the downstairs—” Courtney Budlong began.

  Handsome clutched Bingo’s hand, said “Psst!” and pointed.

  Up on the balcony was what Bingo decided first was a ghost, on second thought, an optical illusion, and finally, a possible human being. In the duskiness of the big room, and at the distance from the floor to the balcony, he could barely make out a woman in gray. Gray dress, gray hair, and—even in the dusk and across the distance he could see—a gray and unpleasant, unfriendly, even malevolent face. The face glared down at them for a few seconds and then the gray figure darted away and was eaten up by the shadows.

  Bingo laughed nervously and said, “Does a ghost go with the house?”

  Courtney Budlong laughed too, but his was reassuring. “Just the caretaker. Someone has to look after the place. The new owner can fire her, and probably will. Now here in the left wing—”

  The door to the left wing led to a club-sized dining room, naked of furniture and pictures but boasting a dusty chandelier. “You ought to see this with the furniture back in it, and the paintings.” More French doors showed a vista of another shaggy lawn, a mass of weed-choked flower beds, and a small fountain, now waterless. “Be absolutely nothing to get these wonderful grounds in shape.” There was a breakfast room, small for this house, but living-room size anywhere else. It, too, looked out on the desolate garden. “The furniture for this room is Early Colonial. Beautiful stuff.”

  There was a butler’s pantry, with empty shelves. “China and glassware are all carefully packed in barrels, of course—” And at last, a good-sized kitchen that showed signs of human occupancy. There were pots and pans on the stove that looked sizable enough to provide for a busy metropolitan restaurant, there was a clutter of ten-cent-store china on the drainboard of the sink, and the big refrigerator was cold to the touch. It was, somehow, reassuring.

  “The caretaker lives in,” Courtney Budlong said, as though he just faintly disapproved. “Her quarters are right through here—” He tapped lightly on a door leading from the kitchen, heard no answer and opened the door.

  The room was not large, nor ornate, but it looked as though someone lived there, and had lived there a long time. A person of simple tastes, though. There was a neatly made-up bed, a slightly shabby carpet on the floor, two hard chairs, a dresser covered with a fresh scarf and sporting a comb, brush and pair of scissors. On the wall was a large and garish reproduction of a Maxfield Parrish painting.

  “Pearl was the housekeeper here for a long time,” Courtney Budlong said, “and she’s stayed on as caretaker. Pearl Durzy. Very efficient woman.”

  And a frightening one, Bingo said to himself. But Courtney Budlong had said that he could—he caught himself—that the new owner could fire her.

  Back in the immense living room, Courtney Budlong paused a moment, and then said, “Let’s see—what part of the house shall we see next?” He thought for another moment, his face broke into a smile, and he said, “The library, of course, and what used to be a replica of a Victorian parlor. Can be again, with the furniture out of storage.”

  The library was the size and shape of the dining room, and it, too, looked out on the dreary lawn and silent fountain. “You have no idea how delightful this vista can be, with a little care. And notice these walls.”

  The walls, as near as Bingo could make out, were of marble. Pale, pink-grained marble. The
re were bookshelves along one side of the room, which, Bingo assumed, entitled it to the name of library. “A library, or a study,” Courtney Budlong said. “Or even a music room.” He touched the pink-grained marble almost lovingly. “Beautiful stuff!”

  He led them back into the hall that led back into the living room in one direction and apparently came to a dead end in the other one. Another flight of stairs led up from it, a narrower, shadowy and dust-laden one.

  Bingo looked back toward the immense living room, then into the pink-grained marble library, and finally looked at Handsome. “This,” he said ecstatically, “certainly beats the Skylight Motel, doesn’t it!”

  “The Skylight Motel?” Courtney Budlong said, faint surprise in his voice.

  This had to be shrugged off fast, Bingo told himself. He smiled and said, “Coming from New York—well, regular hotels just didn’t seem to have any appeal. You know. We didn’t know anything about Hollywood and a couple of friends recommended the Skylight—”

  He didn’t add that the friends had been the classified section of the telephone directory, and a street map of Hollywood.

  “I’ve heard of it,” Courtney Budlong said. “Nice, clean place.” His tone indicated that these two bright young businessmen would be well out of it, though.

  At that moment the caretaker appeared at the bottom of the stairs as unexpectedly as though she’d done it with ectoplasm. She stood there for just an instant glaring at them, and then scuttled—yes, Bingo thought, that was the only word for it—down the hall and across the living room.

  No one spoke for a moment, then Courtney Budlong said, “Poor old soul!” in a kindly voice. “Now let me show you what’s right across the hall—”