Death of a Doll Page 22

  She nodded to Dr Kloppel and quietly took Mark’s measure. He took hers. What he saw was a thin, bent woman with deep lines around her eyes and mouth. They looked like laughter lines of long standing, the kind that begin at the age of one and deepen through the years. He imagined the last few days had given them little to do.

  “Well, Agnes?” he said.

  “Come in, sir. You too, doctor… So she lost her nerve.” She closed the door.

  “Was that it?” Mark asked.

  “Yes, sir. It’s no good in me trying to explain, it has to do with too many things. And aside from that, nobody likes to be the one to point the finger. But I’ve always been a bold piece. I want to talk. And since you were the one to bring this thing to light, I want to talk to you. Foy had his chance, and what did he do?... Are you in as big a hurry as I am?”

  “Yes. I want to see Lillian Harris as soon as possible.”

  Something like affection showed in her eyes. “You’re a cute one. Now you come over here, both of you.” She led them to her bureau. “This is what Miss Plummer wanted to tell you. One of the things.” She gave him the costume, neatly folded. “Shake it out, show it to the doctor. He knows what it is, he’s seen one like it before.”

  He felt as if he had seen one, too, even seen the one he held in his hand. He knew the fringed lashes, the yellow curls, the twisted, pouting lips; the long, full sleeves, the clumsy skirt that would almost touch the floor. He folded the mask and put it in his pocket with a casual air, because he also knew the small, brown mole.

  “I’ve been wondering what happened to the costumes,” he said.

  “Locked up in the linen closet. The very next day. Every girl who wore one turned it in and was checked off. All except the one that was burned. You know which one… I’d like to call your attention to that hem.”

  “You don’t have to. I saw it.”

  She sat down abruptly. “I’m so relieved I could scream,” she said. She was almost crying. “Mr East, we’ve had a terrible time here and a terrible night that’s just passed. We can’t have another. If we do, I don’t know what may happen to—to one of us.”

  “To any one of you in particular, Agnes?”

  “Maybe Miss Harris, I don’t know. Maybe—that’s what’s killing us by inches! We don’t know, we can’t be sure. There isn’t a single one I’d trust, not one. Everybody has a look, an awful look. You walk down the halls at night, and you meet somebody who turns away. Somebody you’ve known and respected for years. Maybe she’s scared too, but maybe she’s—the one!”

  He gave the costume to Dr Kloppel. “Can you get this out of the house for me?”

  Dr Kloppel hesitated. “Foy?”

  “Foy had his chance,” Agnes said. “You can bring it back when you’ve done with it, and I can find it all over again. For Foy.”

  Dr Kloppel opened his large, old-fashioned bag and turned his back. Then, “Nobody saw me do that,” he said. “Where did you find it in the first place, Agnes?”

  She told them, with curiously few digressions and none of the odd hazards that usually beset her class. Her heart kept out of her throat, her hair stayed flat on her head, and she was not laid low by a feather. “And what’s more, I know who it belonged to, I figured it out. I know why it wasn’t missed.”

  It had been handed out to Miss Edith Campbell, she said, a third-floor single. Put on her bed the same as the rest, the morning of the party. But Miss Campbell’s father had been taken sick and she’d been sent for, so she’d gone across the river to Bogota that afternoon. Not many knew she’d gone, she was a quiet girl that kept to herself. But somebody knew, and knew she wouldn’t be back until the next day, if then. And her room was unlocked. Easy enough to steal Miss Campbell’s costume, easy enough to change from one to another in case of blood. Easy enough to lock yourself in a bathroom. “Maybe the second-floor bathroom,” Agnes elaborated, “then hide the extra one in the packroom, where it wouldn’t be found till spring, and walk down one flight as calm as you please.”

  She paused, but it was clearly for breath, not other people’s conversation. “And there’s something else, too. I talked it over with Miss Plummer last night, and we fixed the time. The time is right. It fits.”

  The something else was a summing up of Miss Plummer’s story, with two additions. The first was that Agnes had taken Mrs Marshall-Gill a cup of punch, and shortly after that she’d seen Mrs Marshall-Gill enter the elevator. In answer to his question, she swore by the calendar of saints that Jewel had operated the car. She said there was something about Jewel that you couldn’t mistake; it was the way she held herself—slouched, like. But between taking the punch to Mrs Marshall-Gill and seeing her go upstairs, she’d noticed something queer.

  She was watching the rag dollies having their fun, over by the desk, and she’d laughed to see them. That is, she’d laughed until she saw how mean they acted when Miss Plummer begged for someone to run her errand. Nasty girls, every one, ungrateful as they come, shaking their heads and cackling like geese. She’d tried to guess which ones they were, because she meant to give them what-for in the morning. And that was when she’d seen the peculiar one.

  “Peculiar?” Mark repeated.

  “Not in looks,” Agnes said, “unless you count bunchiness. Peculiar in actions. She was kind of following one rag dolly around, I saw her. She was like somebody rounding up a stray sheep—herding, like. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She got the other dolly up to the desk, right under Miss Plummer’s nose, as slick as you please. Almost threw her, she did. Just like she’d been planning all along. Then she went away herself, mingled, and there was no telling her from the others. I looked to see where she went, and that’s how I saw Mrs Marshall-Gill get in the elevator. But when I turned back to my punch bowl I noticed a dolly on the stair landing, going up. It looked like her, the bunchy one.”

  He kept the excitement out of his voice. “The other doll, the one she pushed, that one was Ruth Miller, wasn’t it?”

  “I said you were a cute one,” Agnes agreed soberly.

  She followed them to the door when they left, her eyes on Dr Kloppel’s bag. “That’s the one he brings the babies in,” she said crossly and absently. “And I’ll thank him to forget my niece’s address.”

  When they had started down the hall, they heard her speak again. She sounded as if she were whispering behind a cupped hand. She said, “Be careful.”

  They continued in silence until they reached the elevator and the stairs. “We’ll walk,” Mark said briefly. They started up.

  “I’d like to talk to you about that mask,” Dr Kloppel said.

  “Not now,” Mark said. He set the pace, moving slowly, frequently looking back. When they came to the fourth-floor landing he leaned over the railing. The empty flights curved steeply down between cream walls and wrought-iron balustrade, broken at intervals by small, bare landings, ending in a patch of red that was the lobby carpet. He looked up into the same monotonous pattern of stair and railing, ending in an iron door. The roof.

  On the next landing he flattened himself against the far wall. “Go up to the sixth,” he said, “lean over the railing and look down. See how much of me is visible. Assuming, of course, that I have the protective coloration of unbleached muslin.”

  The result was what he expected. “I can see you,” Dr Kloppel said, “because I know you’re there and because your clothes are dark. Otherwise, no.” He added, “She had poor vision, too. Even if she did look back, the peculiar dolly would blend with the walls.”

  “Yes. That’s the way it was. I can see it too well, and I wish I couldn’t. The Miller girl, on what might be called an errand of mercy and was certainly one of courtesy, climbing straight to her destruction. The other one behind her, keeping out of sight and moving up, up, up… This place is too quiet, isn’t it?”

  “All at work. They’ll be home shortly after noon, most of them. Saturday half-holiday… Can you explain Minnie May’s story?”

  “T
hat’s the mask story. Later.”

  “Motive?”

  “So-so. I can guess a few things about the private life of the girl we’re looking for, but guessing gets me nowhere. I need facts, and there aren’t any. I can’t pick her out of the crowd unless she panics and pulls a sloppy job, and she probably won’t. I could use a miracle, a little sign-pointing by what I’m sure Agnes would call the Hand of Heaven.”

  They came to the door of the room that had once been Ruth Miller’s. Jones was glad to see them. He had come on duty at seven, he said, and there was no one inside but the sick girl and the blind girl who was taking care of her. The blind girl had put a breakfast tray in the hall and said good morning as plain as you please. His outraged voice denied the blind all right to the power of speech.

  “Foy been here?” Mark asked.

  “He telephoned, sir. You’re to have access.”

  “Thanks.”

  The door opened before they knocked. April turned her head from one to the other, accurately. “Dr Kloppel,” she said. “And Mr East. Come in.”

  Dr Kloppel said, “You look all right, April, but I’d feel better if you were somewhere else.”

  “Oh, no,” she answered quickly. “This is where I belong. Even my boss said so. He said I was to stay with Lillian, he knows I’ve had experience.” She turned to Mark. “Two of my family were killed, so I’m not afraid of anything. And Lillian would rather have me than Mrs Fister.” She crossed the room and sat on her own bed and the high, sweet voice went on. “Lillian’s better today, Dr Kloppel. I think she’s better.”

  Dr Kloppel saturated a wad of cotton. “Well, we mustn’t hope for too much.” He frowned at the quiet figure on the other bed before he touched the cotton gently to the closed eyes.

  “What are you doing, Dr Kloppel?”

  “Bathing her face, that’s all. With something nice and cool.”

  “I’ve done that,” April said. “I’ve done it with cold water.” She looked as if she were listening. “Dr Kloppel, is the other one really Mr East? You didn’t tell me, and he hasn’t said anything.”

  Mark answered. “We haven’t any manners, April. Of course I’m Mr East. I wish you’d tell me if there’s anything I can do for you, anything I can get.”

  Relief flooded her face. “No, thank you. Kitty told me about you. She said not to worry about you.”

  “Had you worried?”

  “A little.”

  “What about now?”

  “No, not now.” She bent over the other bed and put her own face beside the one on the pillow. She whispered, “It’s all right, Lillian, it’s all right.” A small laugh bubbled in her throat. “Scare the doctor, Lillian, scare him like you did me last night.”

  Lillian opened her eyes and gave them a fugitive smile. Dr Kloppel’s quick intake of breath made April laugh again.

  The doctor’s capable old hands moved at once to the girl’s temples and wrist as if he trusted only what he could touch and count. Mark watched. There was a bruise under the bandage, ugly, swelling.

  “If you can talk,” he said softly, “I’d like to hear what you have to say… How long have you been conscious?”

  “Since last night. Late last night.”

  “Anybody know?”

  Her smile was wry and painful. “Am I crazy? No. Not even Fister… I’ve been wondering when you’d get around to me, I’ve been ready for days. Since the day your ad was in the paper. I called you up then, but you were away.”

  “Do you know anything about that doctor?”

  “No, it wasn’t that. I don’t know anything about that. I only wanted to talk to you.”

  “What about?”

  “After Ruth Miller died, some of the kids began to act funny, and I thought it would be smart to find out why. They didn’t tell me anything, I don’t think they knew anything, but they had the creeps. So did I. So when you came into the picture I thought I’d better get my story in as soon as possible.”

  He nodded. “Right. Let’s get on with it.”

  There was no time for sympathy, sympathy ate minutes. No time for coddling in the traditional bedside manner, no time for anything but give and take. Kloppel’s frown said plainly that he didn’t approve, but Kloppel didn’t know about time. He and Miss Plummer knew about it, and perhaps they were the only ones who did, he and Miss Plummer and one other. It was too soon to tell about Lillian Harris. But he forced himself to slow down, for Kloppel’s sake. “Tell it your way,” he said.

  Her eyes clouded. “I thought I heard music last night. I was still groggy but I thought I heard a music box. And if I did—”

  “You heard it. I was out in the hall, outside this door. I found the box, and I know what it was used for. Does that fit in with what you know?”

  “It fits something,” she said. “You know she was murdered, don’t you?”

  “Do you know?”

  “Maybe we’d better get together. Blow by blow description… I was working on a night job when they had the party and I took time off. But the party was too young for me, so I went up to my room for a cigarette. You can check with Jewel, she took me up and I think she knew who I was. I lived on sixth then, in the room under this one. When I got there I wrote some letters and had a smoke. But I turned out my light for that and sat on the window ledge with the window open. That was when I heard the music the first time. I knew it was a box of some kind, but I didn’t know whose. And everybody was supposed to be having fun downstairs. It didn’t make sense. I got curious. So I leaned out and looked up and down, trying to place it. I placed it right off. There was an open window above mine, on the eighth floor. Miss Brady’s bedroom. There was a light on, too—dim, but on. That was one for the book. Light, music, open window, and Miss Brady was supposed to be—”

  “Wait. Where are the medical supplies kept? First aid and all that?”

  “Two places. Fister’s on second and Brady’s.”

  “Good. Did you see Miss Plummer send a girl up for supplies?”

  “I didn’t see it happen, but she was trying to rope one in when I left.” Her eyes narrowed. “Say, is that how?”

  “Wait. Another question, this time on the foolish side. When you were looking out of your window did you see a white cat in the courtyard?”

  She answered evenly. “Not so foolish. He was on the fence. I’d never noticed him before, but he comes every night now.”

  “He’s curious, too.”

  They both laughed, each looking straight at the other, each waiting for the other to stop first. It was as if the white cat had given them a sudden release and timed the duration. When they spoke again, even April knew they had left one road and were starting down another. Their voices were the same, but she burrowed into the pillows of her own bed, putting space between herself and them. Dr Kloppel, because he could see as well as hear, leaned forward.

  “All right so far,” Mark said. “Go on.”

  “Where was I? Brady’s room. Music.”

  “Brady’s room,” he repeated.

  “And Brady at the party—or else… I decided to have a look, so I went out to the stairs and walked up. The fire door on the eighth was propped open, and I could see to the end of the hall. A girl was backing out of Brady’s room and locking it. There was an open door right beside me, so I ducked in and closed it part way. It was dark in there, I could watch her without being seen. She came up the hall, walking fast and not making a sound. She was wearing sneakers.” She waited for his reaction.

  “Anything familiar about her? Posture, anything?”

  “No. Except that she didn’t look—right. She was the same as all of us, same dress, same mask, but there was something else. She didn’t look—right. Then I heard the elevator ringing and remembered that I’d heard it before, when I was walking up. The girl was hearing it, too, and she muttered something and moved faster, almost ran. I thought she was a thief and I was afraid she’d get away. She’d passed the room where I was so I stepped out and starte
d after her. But the minute I did that, I knew it was a boner. She heard me and turned her head. She stopped where she was, turned her head and looked straight through me, straight through the costume, down to me, inside. She didn’t say a word, she held her head on one side as if she were taking me apart, memorising me, making sure she’d know me again. I ducked back and closed the door and waited to die. There was something terrible about that look, it came through her mask and mine, and I knew her eyes were telling me she’d kill me then and there if she only dared. So I stayed where I was, with the door locked, until she had time to get away. Then I went down to my own room and locked myself in there, too. I didn’t go near the window again, I wish I had… I might have been in time.”

  He walked to the window and looked out. The snow had covered the courtyard and was beginning to ridge the fence. There was nothing on that clean white surface, not even the four small prints of an animal. He went back to the bed, whistling under his breath. “No,” he said. “That night or the next, it would have been the same. That night or the next or the one before. No one would have been in time.” He said it again, to himself, before he went on. “Did you go back to the party?”

  “Not for a long time. I was afraid. I was afraid to show up in that costume. I thought there might be something about it that marked me from the others, something in the way I looked that was different and would give me away. So I stayed in my room until I knew they’d unmasked and then I went down wearing my regular clothes. No sneakers on anybody, of course. I looked. Everybody happy and having fun. No cracks about the way I was dressed. Not a single person asked me where I’d been or gave me a funny look. Nobody tried to keep out of my way. That’s all… Except that she knew who I was, all right.” She touched her head with cautious fingers and winced. “She waited a long time, but she finally landed.”