Death of a Doll Read online

  “I’ll be there if I can get some sleep now. I’ve got a couple of stops to make on my way home, so I’ll be going.”

  His first stop was at Mrs Marshall-Gill’s. She was delighted. She inquired into his lineage, his qualifications, his personal hopes, and gave him hers. He was tired enough to scream and fatigue was painting ugly pictures in his mind, but he let her run on because he wanted her affectionate regard when the time came for his questions. He managed to slip the first one in when she paused for breath in the middle of a trip to Yellowstone when she was seven.

  Yes, indeed, she said, she had gone upstairs quite early in the evening. So warm, so crowded, and a little cold water on the back of the neck was always refreshing. So she had asked Miss Brady if she might use Miss Small’s room, Miss Small being engaged elsewhere, and Miss Brady had given grudging consent. An odd woman, Miss Brady, no management, no discipline, and so cold. So she had gone up. And while she was there she had written Miss Small an appreciative little check, so useful for the holidays.

  His eyes told her she was a darling. “Not many people are so thoughtful,” he said. “Now, Mrs Marshall-Gill, I think you returned to the party at about nine o’clock, or very near to it. Did you walk down, or ride?”

  Mrs Marshall-Gill said, “Walk? Really, Mr East!” She added, “That Jewel!”

  “Yes?”

  “Insubordination. I’m tempted to report the girl at the next Board meeting. I rang and rang. I could have walked down in half the time I waited but the girl is paid to operate the elevator and I was determined that she should. And when she finally condescended—” Mrs Marshall-Gill faltered.

  “Then she did—condescend?”

  “Finally. Finally. It was a very odd thing, very odd. I can’t truthfully say she was impertinent, simply because she refused to speak to me, but she was positively venomous in manner. I was really disturbed, after all I’ve done for the House, deficits and so on. And Jewel—” Mrs Marshall-Gill drew closer to the fire. “Mr East, I feel uncomfortable even now when I think of it. Venomous, hateful, I can’t describe it except to say that she wasn’t at all nice… I think she was thinking things about me.”

  He drew closer to the fire himself. “Go on, Mrs Marshall-Gill.”

  “A naughty girl,” she said firmly. “I suspect she’d been drinking or smoking in her room, which is forbidden to employees. She went right up again, put me off at the first floor, and went right up again. No apology for keeping me waiting. That’s what happens when you coddle these people. Dressed up like one of the boarders, lolling and slouching and probably making faces at me behind that mask. And a beauty spot, too. Impertinence.”

  He picked his words carefully after that. He didn’t want her around his neck, screaming.

  “Do you know anything about that beauty spot, Mrs Marshall-Gill?”

  “Know about it? Certainly not. What should I know? Showing off.”

  Then, “You got in the car at the fifth floor. Do you remember where it went when she took it up again?”

  “I remember very well. I watched the little wretch. She lives on second, but she went up to the eighth. That’s under the roof. She was going to walk up to the roof and smoke and drink.”

  He gloated silently. “I suppose you talked to Jewel when she took you up to Miss Small’s?”

  “Why, yes. Why, how strange! She did talk that time, surly, of course, but she did talk. I daresay she’d quarrelled with someone in the meantime. They always quarrel, people like that.”

  “Was she wearing the beauty spot then?”

  “Was she—oh, no. I’d have noticed and commented. No, not then. That’s probably one of the things she was doing when I was in Miss Small’s. Sewing it on, making herself conspicuous. Upstart.”

  He reached for his hat.

  9

  He stood with his back to the fire and looked at the four faces turned to his. He had talked steadily for an hour, sometimes circling the room, sometimes stopping at a window to stare down into the street. They knew he wasn’t seeing that street but another.

  “That’s all for now,” he said. “You’ll have to wait until tomorrow for the rest.”

  “Are you waiting for tomorrow yourself?” Roberta asked pointedly.

  He said there was nothing else he could do. With Foy in Hope House and Foy’s boys patrolling the Hope House halls, nothing could happen. People would keep to their rooms, doors would stay locked in spite of entreaties of bosom pals. Nothing could possibly happen.

  “They’re beginning to suspect their own shadows,” he said. “And that’s the way it should be. I ran over there for a few minutes after I left Marshall-Gill, and you could cut the miasmas with a knife. Foy came in as I was leaving. I didn’t see a single soul except Foy, two cops, and Kitty Brice. I didn’t hear a sound except the lobby clock and Foy clearing his throat. The cops didn’t clear theirs. The switchboard was quiet, the elevator was empty, but all the time I could have sworn there were people on the stairs. Those stairs wind up to the top floor, iron railings like a cage. I even went over and looked up. Nobody. But I kept hearing footsteps. Or thinking I did. I got out of there. I’m glad Foy has it.”

  “Why didn’t you bring Minnie May here?” Beulah asked.

  “Here—why?”

  Beulah smoothed her skirt and plucked at invisible threads. “Oh, just an idea I had. Poor Minnie May, sitting by herself. I hope she doesn’t feel too miserable and lonely. I hope she doesn’t feel so lonely that she opens her door to one of her friends. Even if she did, I guess we wouldn’t know. No, we wouldn’t know about that… Poor Minnie May, all by herself, overcome by remorse. I hope she doesn’t leave a little note in shaky handwriting that doesn’t look like hers but must be because it has her name signed to it. Saying she’s sorry and doesn’t want to live.” She didn’t look at him.

  He went to the window again and came back. “I told Foy,” he said, “I told Foy everything.”

  Beulah went on, tonelessly. “There’s Jewel, too. Maybe Jewel lied to you. You can’t prove she didn’t. You can’t prove anything about seventy people who looked exactly alike. I don’t say she lied, but there was that half hour between the time she took Marshall-Gill up and the time she says she didn’t take her down. I don’t say she met Ruth by appointment, killed her, copied the identifying mole, and reappeared to make a holy show of herself with Minnie May so that at least one person could swear Ruth was alive when she wasn’t. I don’t say Jewel was behind that mask. I don’t even say there was a cross-eyed Indian behind that mask, but there could have been and nobody would know it.”

  No one spoke. Nick shuffled his feet. “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “I don’t have much else to do. What happened to the costumes, Mark?”

  “That’s in my little book. That’s one of the things for tomorrow. That, Plummer, Harris, and the girl named April.” His voice was strained. “Tomorrow. I’m counting on tomorrow… There’s that blue suit, too. I don’t know why it should vanish. She wasn’t wearing it when she died. I can’t see another girl stealing it, but it’s gone.”

  “The one she spilled tea on?” Beulah asked.

  “Yes.”

  “The answer to that is positively childish. It’s at the cleaner’s. It was new, she’d saved for it, so she took it to the cleaner’s right away. She didn’t plan to die before she could collect it. Don’t worry about it, save your strength for important things. Bessy and I will get it for you tomorrow.”

  He gave her a look full of pity, with ice in it. That made him feel better. “May I remind you once more that this is New York?” he said. “There are about a couple of thousand cleaners—”

  “There is exactly one cleaner,” she answered, “and he is somewhere between Blackman’s and Hope House.”

  “That’s a wide area. You’ll waste too much time. You don’t know the neighbourhood.”

  Bessy sat up noisily. “Oh yes, Mark, we—”

  Beulah snarled, “Hush… She means we’ll find it, Mark.�
��

  He began a weary diatribe on their prospects and was about to cap it with an axiom when he stopped himself in time. Where Bessy and Beulah were concerned, an axiom was an old saw that didn’t cut. With his own eyes he had seen them find needles in haystacks and thread them with camels. So he told them to go ahead. At least he’d know approximately where they were and what they were doing. And if they failed, that would be all right, too. It wasn’t important; a cheap blue suit with a spot of tea on it. “Sure, sure, go ahead,” he urged.

  “We may have a little trouble,” Beulah admitted. “No claim ticket.”

  “Don’t give me that! You’ll walk down the first street that takes your fancy and find it hanging in the first window. Up front. But remember this. I only want the blue suit that a Miss Miller left with one of New York’s million dry cleaners. Leave all other garments for their rightful owners.”

  “Not funny,” she said coldly. “Where’ll we bring it?”

  “Call me at Kloppel’s… By the way, I’ve still got nothing on that eye doctor.”

  Bessy sat up again. “We think,” she began.

  “Hush,” Beulah said. “She means we think there isn’t one.”

  “Maybe, maybe,” he said. “I can’t fit him in. I suspect he doesn’t belong. He clutters things up, and we have all the clutter we can handle. Listen, listen to me for the last time. Blackman’s, desperate for help, hired Ruth without references. Her background is a blank, except that she couldn’t conceal her familiarity with department-store selling. She was working there when a musical powder box was stolen from a window-dresser’s truck. We know she reacted badly when anything like that happened in the store. But she was definitely in the clear about the box, she was never in the vicinity of the truck. About a year later, with a good record behind her, she moves to Hope House, having arranged with Miss Brady for a room. Happy as a lark about that move, too. Roberta knows that. Then two days later she was three-quarters beaten to death and apparently thrown from a window to finish her life in a rain-soaked courtyard. The stolen box, now the property of Miss Brady, was the weapon, plus a pair of strong arms. What does that say to you, Roberta?”

  He singled out Roberta because her face had that look again, the one he didn’t like to see. He’d forgotten to pick and choose his words and it was too late to go back. But he could lift her up beside him, he could make her his own age and equal in experience; she was young enough to rise to that. “I want your opinion, Robbie. What does it say to you?”

  Roberta was eager. “I think she saw the person who took the box and recognised—no, that’s wrong. I forget she wasn’t near the truck. Could she have seen the box in Miss Brady’s room at Hope House, and—” She waited for his answer, confused and shy, a natural kid again. That was what he wanted.

  “Nice work, but you’re putting the box in first place because there is an irrevocable tie. I’m not sure it belongs there, I think it’s a secondary issue. Try it this way. Suppose the box was stolen by the window-dresser’s boy after all, or by a charwoman, or a nameless clerk who never was considered and never will be. And suppose it was pawned, and Miss Brady saw it and liked it and bought it. That could be. That doesn’t alter anything we already have. Nothing in that to make Ruth Miller die.”

  “Well, no.”

  “Quite. Now go back to the night Ruth moved to Hope House. You all know what happened. She came in, at dinnertime. Everybody, or nearly everybody, was in the lobby. Milling around, coming and going, and, I imagine, giving the new girl the once-over. She came in smiling. She smiled at Miss Small who was on desk duty; she shook hands, she was happy, she was where she wanted to be. And in two or three minutes, four at most, she was terrified. No explanation, no conversation. She left the place at once, went out into the street alone. Probably to walk, to think, to pull herself together. And she came back, perhaps because she had no other place to go. But the terror was so obvious that Miss Small told Miss Brady about it and they wondered what kind of girl she was.

  “Now get this. Ruth hadn’t seen the box. She couldn’t have known it was there. She had never been upstairs. She had walked from the front door to the desk and that’s all. And yet she was frightened almost out of her wits. The box had nothing to do with that. It couldn’t have.

  “No, the terror was right there in the lobby. And it was so strong that after that first night she didn’t leave her room unless she had to, she stayed away from meals, she avoided people whenever she could. You see what I mean? The box had no significance then. It was only significant later, when it was used as a weapon. A hammer would have done the job as well, if a hammer had been handy… There’s something we don’t know, see? Something about Ruth that we don’t know. Her life, from the time she came to Blackman’s a year ago, was as dull and open as any life can be. The box came and went in that same year, too, and nothing happened. No, we have to go farther back.”

  “Back,” Roberta repeated. “Back to where?”

  “I don’t know. Measuring in length of time, I don’t know. But in distance, only to Hope House.”

  Inspector Foy left Hope House at eleven-thirty, hiding his chagrin under a show of manners that did credit to his sixteen-year-old daughter’s nagging. He had been given every facility. Bells had been rung, three rings which meant an emergency; bells and voices had shrilled together in the upper halls. Girls who had gone to bed were routed out and herded down to lounge and lobby; girls who were dressed, half dressed, and undressed overflowed both rooms. He had questioned, cajoled, and wondered audibly if he should call the wagon. In the end he had sent them back to bed, richer for the experience. He had learned that bobby pins look good on some and bad on others.

  He’d looked in on Lillian Harris, as Mark had done; he’d listened to Minnie May who had alternately screamed and cried. He’d been glad to close Minnie May’s door behind him and climb to the roof. The roof was his own idea. But it was flat and empty, except for a pile of deck chairs under tarpaulin, and the side that faced the court was fenced with six-foot wire. Not even a cigarette butt.

  Back in the lounge he was given coffee, and after that he departed, leaving two men in charge. One of these, Moran, spent the night in the lobby, occasionally riding up in the elevator to check with his colleague on the seventh floor. The latter was named Bessemer, and he was stationed outside Lillian Harris’s door. That had been Mark’s suggestion. Every half hour Bessemer opened the door and received a signal from Mrs Fister. It always told him things were as they should be. Moran had been told to patrol all floors, but the lobby was warm and the halls were not. And there was a good chair in the lobby.

  Bessemer liked his job. He had never seen so much night bathing. Over a dozen women trailed in and out of the bathroom at various times, singly and in pairs. He could hear them talking, even through the closed door. When Moran came up on one of his trips, he told him about it. Moran said it was the same way on second. From his chair in the lobby he could hear them gathering at the head of the stairs, could feel them listening, could see them hanging on the railing when he got up and walked over that way.

  “It’s a big night in their lives,” Moran said unblushingly. “Two men in the house. Give me a whistle down the stairs if you get overpowered.”

  Bessemer thought he could handle himself. “What do you make of this one?” he asked cautiously. “Were you on it before?”

  “I was.” Moran lowered his voice. “I was on it, I stood right beside it, I rode to the morgue with the boys. It’s an old story to me. Not that I haven’t got a heart—I have, big as all outdoors—but I’ve seen too much in this man’s town. I’m giving you the pay-off right there in three little words. This Man’s Town. It’s no place for a girl alone, a girl alone can’t handle herself, a nice girl I mean. Somebody says he loves her, and she finds out too late that he don’t—not her way, anyhow. So what? So a big drink of a common household poison, that’s what you get in the respectable residential districts. Fancy sleeping pills in the Park Avenue area
. Rooming houses, tenements, cheap hotels—nosedive out the window. Like this one here. Open and shut. I saw it right away. So did Foy.”

  Bessemer objected. “Then why does Foy—”

  “Listen. Foy is an old friend of Kloppel’s. Kloppel’s got the wind up about that girl inside with the broken head. He’s not so young any more. So Foy is playing ball for old times’ sake. Couple more nights and we’ll be through, and thank you very much, officer. Don’t complain. Ain’t this better than sitting around the station house or picking up drunks?”

  The lobby was dim and quiet. Moran dozed with one ear turned to the switchboard. The switchboard was a part of his job, but no one called.

  On the second floor, Agnes sat with Miss Plummer, although Miss Plummer tried to say it wasn’t necessary. Agnes said she knew it wasn’t; she said Miss Plummer looked fine. She said she felt fine herself but for some reason she didn’t feel like going to bed. She felt like company, if Miss Plummer didn’t mind. And that big chair was as good as a bed any day in case she should get sleepy. And suppose Miss Plummer wanted a drink of water? Well, there she’d be, ready to get it and only too pleased.

  Miss Plummer lay with her eyes closed and the blankets up to her chin.

  “Miss Mainwaring was out in the hall a while ago,” Agnes said. “I happened to be out there myself. It was before I came in here. I went to the top of the stairs to see if that policeman was still in the lobby… You know about the police being here, Miss Plummer?”

  Miss Plummer nodded, but she didn’t open her eyes.

  “She wasn’t doing anything, Miss Mainwaring wasn’t. Just walking up and down with her hands folded on her breast. It could be that she was praying, she does a good bit of that.” Agnes rocked steadily. “She don’t belong on this floor. She belongs on fourth.”

  “Tell my sister,” Miss Plummer said.