by Craig Rice
Malone chewed on his cigar for a moment and said nothing.
“Well, Malone,” Jake said, “what does that prove?”
Malone glared at him. “Just one thing. Carmena Estapoole didn’t murder her first two husbands. Now let me alone, I want to think.”
CHAPTER 24
“Go on and think,” Jake said sulkily. “Alter I go to all this trouble for you—” He started for the door.
“Sit down,” Malone said; “don’t go away.” He sighed. “Why doesn’t Helene get here?” He glared at Jake and at the world in general. “Here you come in with information that doesn’t mean a damned thing, and Helene is evidently paying her social calls by the scenic route.”
“That’s gratitude,” Jake said. He added, “Don’t bite the many hands that make light work. And what is this terrific need for haste, anyway?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” Malone said wearily. For just a moment he buried his face in his hands.
Jake looked anxiously at his old friend. “Malone, there’s something worrying you that you’re not telling.”
“Me?” Malone said with false heartiness.
Before Jake could ask more questions, the telephone rang. It was Charlie Firman.
“It wasn’t easy, chum,” the Weasel reported, “but I got it. Even got a look at the will, and don’t ask me how I did it. It’s beautiful.”
“So is a Rembrandt,” Malone said wearily, “but what’s in it?”
“Old man Estapoole divided up his dough, after a bunch of minor bequests to old retainers, pet charities and the like, with absolute and touching impartiality. It’s an even split all around. His wife, his nephew Hammond, his niece Jane Estapoole, his step-stepchild Lily Bordreau and his stepchild Alberta Commanday. Everybody gets an equal share.”
Malone was silent for a moment. Yes, he would have expected something like that from the late Leonard Estapoole.
“He pointed out in his will,” Charlie Firman said, “that his beloved, and I quote, wife Carmena would understand this equitable distribution in view of the fact that he had already settled a trust fund on her when they were married. He added that he liked all the members of his family and didn’t want any of them to be jealous of any of the others.” He paused. “Does that help?”
“Considerably,” Malone said. “It would help even more if I knew if the family had any idea of the provisions of the will in advance.”
“I can answer that too, pal,” Charlie Firman said. “I think of everything. Old Featherstone confided to me that Leonard Estapoole had been very secretive about the will as far as his family was concerned. Not a one of them knew what was in it. They probably all assumed it would go mostly to Carmena.”
“Charlie,” Malone said earnestly, “just what do you have on Orlo Featherstone?”
“If I told you, I’d be giving away half my business secrets,” he said with mock severity. “Are you hinting that an old and respected estate lawyer like Orlo O. Featherstone would have any secrets in his life?”
“I won’t answer that,” Malone said. “Now, roughly, what kind of dough is involved?”
“Everything considered in,” Charlie Firman said, “something over thirty-two million dollars.”
There was a long pause.
Finally Malone said, “Thanks,” and hung up. He did a little mental figuring. Jane Estapoole, though she didn’t know it now, was due to inherit one fifth of thirty-two million dollars, a figure he didn’t even want to contemplate. He sighed deeply. Now he certainly wouldn’t dare ask her for that dinner date, let alone follow it up with some important ideas that had been developing in his mind.
Well, at least she’d always be one of the nicest memories of a long lifetime of happy memories.
“Malone,” Jake said, “don’t you feel well?”
“Never felt better in my life,” Malone said. He looked at his watch. There were still three hours of freedom.
It seemed like a very long time before Helene arrived, a vision in pale green wool and an armful of fluffy furs the exact color of maple sugar. She was a little breathless and pinkcheeked.
“I hurried,” she announced, “as much as you can hurry a bunch of casual conversations. But I got everything, Malone.” She pulled a piece of notepaper from her green suede purse.
“I don’t know why you care about the night Leonard Esta-poole was killed,” she said, “since that murder’s all settled. And according to the papers there’s no doubt in the minds of the police that there were two separate murderers—”
“Never mind the minds of the police,” Malone said, “and keep your personal opinions out of this. Just let’s have the information.”
She wrinkled her nose at him and handed him the paper. “On the night Leonard Estapoole was murdered, Carmena Estapoole, Hammond Estapoole and Jane Estapoole were playing bridge with a Miss Hardiman, who is the principal of the private school Alberta attends. They played from about eight o’clock until around midnight—just past midnight, according to the Estapoole butler. He remembers that Miss Hardiman was worried about the lateness of the hour. He, by the way, had been on hand all evening serving refreshments. Hammond drove Miss Hardiman home because the chauffeur had the evening off.”
The chauffeur, Malone reflected, had been out busily winding up Alberta’s kidnaping. He wondered how Alberta was making out with Ma Blodgett.
“Miss Hardiman,” Helene said, “is a very charming, though slightly intellectual, lady. I know her.”
And Carmena and Hammond, Malone told himself, were probably very happy to have the diversion of a bridge game while their fake kidnaping was being carried out. He’d have preferred poker himself, but there was no accounting for tastes. And Jane Estapoole was the kind of thoroughly nice girl who would willingly make a fourth at bridge if one were needed.
“And Lily Bordreau,” Helene said, “was down in her studio, making some sketches. Some friends who came in can probably alibi her.”
She shoved the paper closer to Malone. He picked it up and saw the note she’d scribbled on the bottom. Malone, l was there with her all evening and all night and she never stepped outside the door. Don’t tell Jake yet.
The little lawyer laid a paperweight over the note and said, “I imagine Lily Bordreau’s alibi will hold up, if she should need one. Now, about last night.”
Helene drew a long breath and said, “Carmena and Hammond were home, and about half the Lake Forest police can testify to that, because they were hueing and crying after Alberta. Which reminds me—”
“She’ll be all right,” Malone said. “Go on.”
“Lily Bordreau was driving you into town, and you and she discovered the body together. Jane Estapoole left around the time you did and went to her apartment because she wanted to get a good night’s rest before a busy day.”
A rest, Malone remembered unhappily, which he and Lily had very thoroughly interrupted.
“And that’s the lot, Malone.” She looked at him anxiously. “Malone, is everything all right?”
He felt his face smiling but his heart wasn’t behind it. “Naturally everything’s all right. Now it’s just going to be a matter of simple arithmetic.” He could feel the smile staying there as though it had been cast in concrete. “So maybe you’d better run along and look after your guest.”
They didn’t want to leave him, and said so.
He informed them that nothing exciting or important was going to happen for a few hours, and when something was going to, he’d call them immediately. He said firmly that he wasn’t unhappy, the only cloud on his horizon was what might be going on with Alberta, and that if they really wanted to be helpful, they might pump her for a little information.
That did it. They left him in quiet, if not in peace.
A simple matter of arithmetic, he told himself.
Everybody was alibied for the night of Leonard Estapoole’s murder. Absolute, perfect, unquestionable alibis. The police—and everybody else—who had put this down as the
work of two murderers wouldn’t care about the events and alibis of that night.
But he knew there was only one murderer. And for murder number one, every member of the Estapoole family was out.
Which left him back at combing the city of Chicago for some complete unknown who had wanted that envelope of papers badly enough to commit two murders for them. This, before five o’clock.
It was a shade after two now.
Maggie came to the door and said in a worried voice, “Is there anything you want, Malone?”
He repressed an impulse to send her for a batch of travel folders and to have her get in touch with the passport office. “Not a thing, thanks. I’m doing fine.” He added instinctively, “Don’t worry.”
For a long time he sat behind his desk staring moodily at nothing.
He realized now what his original mistake had been. He’d been convinced—mistakenly, he knew now—that Carmena and Hammond Estapoole had either committed a murder or arranged it. Only, he consoled himself, because that seemed to be the classic, the perfect solution. Aging and unlikable—to say nothing of unlovable—solid citizen and sterling character, with a vast amount of stocks and bonds and real cash money. Young and beautiful and glamourful wife, already twice widowed-widowed by accident, and at a pleasant financial profit. Poverty-stricken but handsome and highly attractive young nephew.
Yes, it had been classic and perfect, and based, he reminded himself bitterly, on too many years of newspaper reading. Only, it hadn’t been correct, and on the strength of the conviction that had been based on a purely romantic notion, he had blithely arranged for Frank McGinnis to allow himself to be framed for murder on a short-term basis, and had guaranteed to produce not only a better but a provable suspect, in what he now realized was an appallingly brief period of time.
Now he was not only back where he had started from, but considerably worse off than that. Frank McGinnis and Max Hook weren’t at all interested in beautiful theories that had been blown to bits, and neither were the police. They wanted results, and they wanted them in less than three hours.
He looked unhappily at his desk. The little bronze Buddha was still missing, probably somewhere in the vastnesses of the police department, eventually to be tagged Exhibit A. He had never paid a great deal of attention to it, but now he missed it. It had always given him an amiable smile, and there had even been a few choice occasions when he would have sworn that it winked at him.
Now, he sat staring at the empty space where it had always been, and suddenly the idea came to him. He got up and prowled around the room restlessly. It was such a wild idea, such an incredible, impossible idea, that he knew it had to be right. The more he thought about it, the more positive he grew.
Suddenly he picked up the phone and called Tommy Storm.
“One more thing,” he said, knowing that he could trust her now. “You were watching when Leonard Estapoole came into this building night before last. So you also saw who else went in.”
“Naturally,” she said.
“And you saw who slugged me and then hauled me away to that West Madison Street Hotel.”
“Of course,” she said.
“I was a double-damned fool not to ask you before,” he said. “The next time I ask you will be with the cops along.”
“I’m your gal,” she said cheerfully.
That took care of that, he thought, as he hung up. Last night’s murder—he scowled, thinking again about the little bronze Buddha. It had been washed and polished.
The brass snake-charmer, as von Flanagan called it, had also been washed and polished.
A simple matter of arithmetic.
For a moment it seemed as though his heart had not just turned to lead, but had left his body entirely.
He walked to the window and looked out over the Chicago rooftops he knew so well. The spring rain was beginning to fall again, but gently now. A phrase kept running through his mind. “That’s the way things are because that’s the way things are.”
At last he went back to the desk, to pick up the phone and call von Flanagan. The phone rang before he could pick it up.
It was Helene, and her voice was frantic. “Malone, she’s not here. Alberta.”
“Ma Blodgett?” Malone said stupidly.
“She left a note. She says, ‘The party who came for the little girl being a friend of yours and kin to the little girl and she being willing to go home for once I guessed it was all right especially as I couldn’t reach you on the telephone noplace.’”
Malone swore. Then he said, “I’ll be right there. We’ll call the police after I get there.”
“Malone,” Helene gasped out, “you mean it isn’t all right? Alberta going home, I mean.”
“Alberta hasn’t gone home,” Malone said grimly. “This time, she’s really been kidnaped. By the killer.”
CHAPTER 25
“It’s my fault,” Malone said stupidly, staring at Maggie. “It’s altogether, completely and one hundred per cent my fault.”
She looked at him, bewildered. “What’s your fault, Malone?”
“Everything,” the little lawyer said wildly. “Absolutely everything!” He grabbed his hat and topcoat and headed for the door. “I’m going up to Jake and Helene’s.”
“And from there?” she asked, following him.
“From there, I don’t know. I’m not even sure that it matters.”
In the doorway he collided with what seemed to be a small but determined cyclone. He grabbed Lily Bordreau just in time to keep her from falling, muttered an apology, looked just long enough to recognize her, grabbed her by the elbow, and said, “Come on.”
While they waited by the elevator, Malone leaning on the buzzer and swearing under his breath at the service, she pulled herself together enough to say, “Come on where?”
“Jake and Helene’s,” he said. “Alberta’s been kidnaped.”
“Of course she’s been kidnaped,” Lily Bordreau said. “We know that. But why all this big crazy rush right now?”
“This time,” Malone said grimly, “it’s for real.”
There wasn’t time to say anything more before the elevator arrived. The day elevator operator remarked on the way down that it had turned out to be a nasty day after all, and boy, didn’t Marty Budlicek have it soft!
Malone agreed with him on both counts and hurried Lily Bordreau through the shabby lobby and out into what had become a thin, disagreeable rain. By the time he’d hailed the first taxi that came along, and they were settled in it and headed north, he was sufficiently reorganized to take a good look at her.
She still wore the ripe watermelon-color skirt and sweater, and the small string of turquoises. There was a little mud on her tiny green sandals, and her stockings were splashed with mud and rain. Her dark curls were a little mussed, her lipstick was just a little crooked, and her face was very pale. Malone suddenly wondered how she was going to feel when she discovered she’d inherited a fifth of more than thirty million dollars.
“How do you feel?” he asked solicitously.
“Exactly as if I’d been moth-proofed,” she told him. “I woke up this morning, not especially bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, but ready to tackle the world again. But Jane thought I ought to rest some more. So she gave me some hot milk and a sleeping pill that must have been designed for a good-sized horse. She meant well. But I woke up again and decided I ought to wake all the way up, so I fought my way in and out of a cold shower, drank several gallons of coffee, and here I am, wide awake.” She yawned. “And what’s been going on while I was away in dreamland, Malone?”
“Everything,” he said. “Alberta wasn’t kidnaped last night. She took it into her head to hide in the back of Helene’s car, which was parked in your family driveway. Don’t ask me how it got there, or any more details, they’re entirely too complicated to cope with right now. Nobody knows just yet what her reason was. But while she was at Helene’s and presumably in safe hands—”
The taxi sto
pped in front of the apartment hotel. Malone said, “Tell you the rest when we get upstairs,” and helped her out.
Upstairs, Helene opened the door for them, her eyes widening at the sight of Lily Bordreau.
“Then it wasn’t Lily!” she said, shutting the door.
“Of course it wasn’t Lily,” Malone said crossly. “I knew that the minute I remembered her hands were dirty. And get this child a drink before she goes back to sleep on us. We need her.”
Helene made drinks for everybody. “Malone,” she called from the kitchenette, “it must have been just before we got back home. Because that half-empty bottle of Coke on the end-table was still icy.”
“And don’t blame Ma Blodgett,” Jake said.
“I don’t blame Ma Blodgett,” Malone said, “I blame me.” He reached for the telephone and called Ma Blodgett’s number.
Her explanation simply enlarged on what she’d put in the note. She’d assumed everything was all right. And since the little girl had gone home to her family—at last, Ma Blodgett added—there wasn’t any need for her to wait around.
“I should have warned her,” the little lawyer said unhappily. He paused. “But I didn’t have any idea what to warn her against.” He looked almost unbearably guilty. “Especially against Jane Estapoole. If I’d used my head—” He buried his face in his hands.
Lily Bordreau clucked affectionately at him, patted his shoulder, and put his drink in his hand.
“But, Malone,” Helene said, “how did Jane know she was here?”
“Because I told her,” Malone said, in complete and utter misery.
There was a little silence. Then he looked up and said, “It was one of those things. It slipped out. I didn’t think she’d noticed and anyway, I didn’t think it mattered. I’d never met anyone like her before.” In the future, if he had one, he told himself fiercely, he would stick to people he could trust, like Tommy Storm. He’d be able to spot when they were lying to him, and he’d know he could believe them when they told the truth. “I never knew a really, really nice girl before,” he finished.