Death of a Doll Page 23

  “Are you too tired to tell me about that?”

  “There’s nothing to tell. I don’t know what happened. I was having a shower, late, and somebody turned the light off. I thought it was April, acting up, so I said, ‘Cut it out, kid’... I didn’t hear her that time either, I guess she wore the sneakers again, but I know that’s who it was. Something hit me on the side of the head and the next thing I knew I was in this bed. When I heard the music I thought I was dreaming, and then I heard Fister and April talking. That’s how I knew I’d been out for some time. So I stayed out until Fister went down for some food and then I told April I was all right.”

  “Who would know you were in the shower?”

  “Nobody, unless I was being watched. I’m sure I was being watched. I went all over the house that night, just as I’d been doing every night, sticking my neck out, asking dumb questions that wouldn’t sound dumb to the right person. I even carried the paper with your ad. I wanted to smoke her out, I thought I could spot her. I didn’t. But she knew me, all right. I worried her, I was getting too close, and she decided she’d had enough. I know she meant to kill me, and I think she thought she had. Or maybe somebody came down the hall and she had to run before she could check. And maybe she was afraid to come back because she didn’t belong on that floor and couldn’t think of a good lie in case she was seen. I’ve been wondering why she picked that night in particular and I think it was because you were away. She knew you were suspicious, but you were away. She felt safe… Could that be it?”

  “How would she know I was away? It wasn’t public knowledge. Ever think of that?”

  “No, but I’m thinking now. I didn’t tell a soul. I called you from April’s drugstore and the place was practically empty. I mean the only people there were strangers.”

  He got up. “See how confusing it is? We’ll forget it for a while and go on to something you can be sure about. This is the old routine, everybody’s had it but you. Did you know Ruth Miller before she came here?”

  “No.”

  “Did you see her at the party or talk to her?”

  “No.”

  “But you did see her come in that first night?”

  “Yes. I was in the lobby then.”

  “How did she look?”

  “All right at first. Then—not so good.”

  “What does that mean? Ill at ease? Sick? Frightened?”

  “Frightened.”

  “April?”

  April sat up, hugging a pillow and looking as if she wanted to hide.

  “April, can you add to Lillian’s story or change it in any way?”

  “Oh, no, sir!”

  10

  Bessy and Beulah began the day at six o’clock with a call for lemon juice in hot water. They bathed, dressed, and toyed with breakfast. They studied the weather reports and tested the staying power of the snow by raising the windows and letting it into the house. At nine they embarked, disdaining advice and all offers of assistance.

  They would find Ruth Miller’s suit in fifteen minutes, they said; and after that they’d shop all day. No, they did not want a box lunch, a suggestion that came out of the corner of Roberta’s mouth; they did not want name tags pinned to their coat sleeves by Nick. They did not want the company of Mrs Hawks who followed them to the elevator explaining that she had time on her hands, that she knew the proposed itinerary like the palms of the same, and that this was not her first experience with sudden death. Some years before, she told them, when traveling in the Balkans with the ducal family, she had crossed a public square ten minutes before an assassination failed to come off. They left Mrs Hawks looking snubbed, which was a good omen for the day.

  They taxied to Blackman’s, dismissed the cab, and struck out in opposite directions. They had put half a block between them before they discovered the error. Then arm in arm, and somewhat shaken, they went down the adjacent crosstown street.

  It was obviously the wrong one. There were no cleaners. The windows were filled with boxes of feathers, artificial flowers, and bolts of ribbon and straw braid. But they were pretty windows, so the time wasn’t wasted. After that they returned to Fifth Avenue and took the next street. Boxes of buttons, bolts of tape and binding, buckles, zippers, hooks and eyes. Not pretty, but interesting because of the quantity.

  It was ten-thirty when they finally found a block that looked promising. They didn’t know it, but Hope House was less than five minutes away. Several nights before, Beulah had limped and shivered along that same shabby stretch of houses and small shops, but the daylight and falling snow had changed its face.

  A very young child, with an accent and a diverting scab between nose and lip, recommended a cleaner and dyer named Tom. He also recommended Tom as a grandfather and said he was a nice man. He led them to a shop a few doors away.

  Tom and his grandson were an affectionate pair, alike in feature, speech, and temporary blemish. Yes, Tom said, he had Miss Miller’s suit and they were welcome. Hanging in the back room for a long time, under a sheet, and he was making ready to ask if anybody knew where the lady was.

  Beulah told him the lady was sick. He said he wasn’t surprised. She was a sickly looking lady, and he was making ready to wonder what had happened to her. He brought out the suit and held it up, shaking his head. In spite of cleaning and pressing and only a few hours’ wear, it had begun to sag and fall into twisted folds.

  “Botch tailoring,” he said sadly.

  “Did Miss Miller say anything to you about not feeling well?” Beulah asked.

  No, he said, but it was written on her. Her hands had no strength to them, she was always dropping everything on the floor. She was always looking into the street while talking and turning her head if somebody went by, and no colour in her face and no flesh on her bones. A fever, he thought.

  Beulah said he was right. Miss Miller had a kind of fever and she’d gone away.

  To the country, Tom hoped. She had a suitcase, she carried the suit in it. She liked the suit good, you could see in the way she gave it to him. It was a botch, it was trash, but who was he to say so? And she wanted he should keep it for a couple weeks, until she came back. And she paid in advance so he would know for sure that she was coming, and he was to keep it safe away from the dust. He was to take care.

  “Paid?” Beulah’s voice cracked. She repaired it with a long, loud cough. “She forgot to tell me she paid. I wish she—wrap it up, will you? And many thanks.”

  There was a slip of paper pinned to one curling lapel, a crumpled slip with a line of pencilled figures. Tom’s hieroglyphics, she thought. A bulge of currency in the sweater pocket of Tom’s grandson completed the business, and she went out into the snowy street followed by a silent Bessy.

  “Don’t talk to me,” she snapped. “I don’t feel like it.”

  “Neither do I,” Bessy said.

  The mask, the costume, and the music box were on Dr Kloppel’s table. Mark pointed to the mole. “So,” he said, “that’s the key. If that isn’t Ruth Miller’s mask, it’s a copy.”

  “Copy?”

  “The girl who killed Ruth needed a mask with a mole. She needed to show her ugly, hidden self to the public and give the impression that Ruth still walked the earth. She had the mask she swiped from Miss Campbell’s room, but it was what you might call unadorned. So she removed Ruth’s mask and substituted Miss Campbell’s, or she marked Miss Campbell’s to look like Ruth’s. This mask rode down in the elevator with Mrs Marshall-Gill when Ruth was dead. It danced with Minnie May, too, unless Minnie May is lying.”

  “But Mr East! If she took the original away from the poor girl, it would be—I mean it wasn’t a very neat—”

  “Listen. If this is the original, it isn’t stained because she got hold of it first. Get me, first. And that would be easy, too easy. Ruth Miller at bay, like a little cottontail facing a man with a gun. No trick at all. Simply snatch it, do the grisly job, substitute the other when she was half-conscious. Go on downstairs and parade a
round. A beautiful alibi, for self and victim. I don’t know why I haven’t heard it. Why hasn’t somebody given me a wide-eyed stare and said, ‘Oh, I’m sure I saw her, Mr East. I’m sure I saw her at nine-thirty or ten. The mole, you know. I think I even called so-and-so’s attention to her.’ Why hasn’t somebody given me that?”

  “Maybe because it wasn’t needed. You’ve got a smart girl there. She wouldn’t overdo it, she’d wait until you pressed her and then she’d try to remember. If you didn’t press her, she’d keep her mouth shut. Very wise.”

  “Yes… And now I’m beginning to worry about the staff. Maids and Fister.”

  Dr Kloppel said, “Ridiculous. Impossible.”

  “Why?” Mark asked. “Sell it to me and then I can throw it away.”

  “I’ll sell it to myself at the same time.” The doctor stroked the leaves of his rubber plant as if it were the only reliable thing in the world. “First, Mrs Fister. She’s too big for those costumes. Forget Mrs Fister. Second, the maids you haven’t seen are Clara, Pauline, and Mollie. They’ve been with the place since it opened, and they all have some connection with somebody, like being cousin to a cook who works for one of the Board. The chef and his helpers, two neighbourhood women, never show themselves above stairs; I doubt if they know one girl from another. And you can forget the Miller girl’s rooming house, too, in case your thoughts are turning in that direction. Foy covered it and found nothing… Foy called me up this morning and told me about his Hope House interviews. He sounded like monastery material.”

  “Let that plant alone. You’ll have the leaves off… There weren’t any scratches on the window sill in Ruth Miller’s room, either.”

  “You’re backtracking on something you already know,” the doctor complained. “Ruth Miller went out of Miss Brady’s window, Lillian Harris says so.”

  “She doesn’t say so, she suggests it. She puts a light in Brady’s room and a suspicious, not to say evil, character in Brady’s doorway and hall. Plummer puts Ruth Miller on the second floor and possibly the eighth at approximately the same time. I admit it fits… I used to wonder why Ruth Miller wasn’t missed. I don’t now. She was new and friendless, but Lillian Harris was neither; and Harris disappeared for nearly two hours without causing a ripple. Even when her disappearance coincided with a murder, even when the cops took over, did anybody squeal?”

  “You mustn’t forget it was pretty hard to tell those girls apart.”

  “I’m beginning to think it wasn’t as hard as they say. Didn’t Miss Mainwaring win a prize for spotting her heavily disguised playmates? Now why didn’t I think of that before? How many did she guess and who were they? Do you know?”

  “I do not. Maybe somebody over there can help you.”

  “Hah! I can see that! No, I’ll go up to Blackman’s and talk to Moke and Poke. I want them to look the mask over, too. They ought to be able to identify their own sewing… This much we’ve got to believe. Lillian Harris was upstairs when Ruth Miller was. She saw the cat and she heard the music, and she couldn’t have made that up. The cat saw the body leave the window and heard the music, too. I know he did. He gave me an unmistakable playback. So that being as certain as anything can be, we’d better concede that Lillian Harris met the murderer in the eighth-floor hall.”

  They were both quiet then, each of them seeing what the cat saw, what Lillian Harris saw, what the other, nameless one saw and was probably still seeing late at night when the hours went by too slowly.

  Dr Kloppel, one arm relaxed on the table, his eyes on the falling snow beyond his windows, absently raised the lid of the music box. Thou wouldst still be adored as this moment thou art, the box sang sweetly. They flung themselves forward and closed it.

  Dr Kloppel fumbled for a cigarette, broke it, and found another.

  “All that stuff goes to Foy this afternoon,” Mark said too casually. “I’ll take it down there after I see the kids at Blackman’s.” He turned and twisted in his chair and went on with a sudden, repressed fury. “Somebody lied to me! Not a good, big lie that I could see coming a mile away, but a mousey little stinker that merged with the landscape. Some smart girl fed me a smooth little whopper that got by because it was the natural, normal thing for her to say. Such as, ‘I went into the lounge to see if the fire needed more wood.’ That’s the kind of thing I mean, that’s what a woman like Plummer could give me if she wanted to hide her actual whereabouts, and I’d swallow it whole. She might have been walling up a body in the cellar, but I’d have a picture of the old girl messing up the wood basket, because that’s her type. That’s how I’ve been reasoning, and that’s where I’ve gone wrong. I’ve put too much time on the outstanding deviations from routine when what I really want is the small piece of extraneous matter that some bright girl slipped into the machinery. It’s so small and so simple that I don’t know what it is or who did it. But somebody looked me straight in the eye, folded her hands in her lap, and told me she was breathing, Mr East, just breathing. And she’s my girl.”

  “Getting mad now, aren’t you?” Dr Kloppel said with satisfaction. “In people like you it’s a good sign… Some of those girls gave pretty detailed accounts of themselves, didn’t they?”

  “Some. Miss Kitty Brice gave me absolutely nothing and made no bones about it, and Miss Mainwaring, self-appointed handmaiden to the Lord, also gave nothing, but with flourishes. Jewel, not much; Minnie May and Harris, a lot. But excessive detail isn’t necessarily false, if that’s what you mean. Innocent people often stampede themselves into remembering… I’ve wasted too much time trying to prove somebody was upstairs when she said she wasn’t. I’ve got to prove somebody wasn’t downstairs when she said she was.”

  Dr Kloppel said, “Upstairs, downstairs, wasn’t, was. You need a drink.” He went to a bookcase with opaque glass doors and selected a bottle. “No ice, it dilutes. And don’t look at the clock. I know what time it is, but I’ve got those things in my stomach that young ladies call butterflies.” The scotch gurgled into two scrolled and posied shaving mugs marked SON and PAPA. “Papa’s was his,” Dr Kloppel said gently. “Many’s the time I’ve stood on a hassock and watched that man throw the soap around and sing ‘Bright Her Smiles.’” He pushed SON across the table and kept PAPA for himself. “Do you feel as bad as I do?”

  “Worse. I got into this when it was cold, and I wasn’t convinced, either. I didn’t see how Brady and Small could make a mistake. Girls are their business, I figured they knew what they were talking about. But so help me, I did have a queasy feeling.”

  “You’re entitled to the queasy feeling, but no more. You’ve been on this case less than a week and look what you’ve done. Then look at Foy.”

  “I haven’t got time to look at Foy. I haven’t got time to take those girls aside one by one and beat a life story out of each and double check. That would do it. And Foy hasn’t got the time, either. Foy and I ought to take turns at twenty-four-hour duty in that place, but if we do, I’m afraid we’ll be opening another window. If you get what I mean… I don’t like my girl.”

  “Do you mind telling a practically superannuated stork just how much you know about your girl?”

  “My girl is the kind who couldn’t take it when she was five years old and some other kid in the block was prettier than she was. When she was ten, she couldn’t take it when some other kid got better marks in school or had more spending money. She can’t take anything now, anything that makes her feel inferior, imposed upon, or gets in her way. Anybody who does that, even unconsciously, is asking to be a dead duck. My girl will gamble on the impossible and bring it off, because she runs around with people who’ve been taught that nice girls don’t do bad things. Nice girls do anything and everything, as your stork trade must have taught you. My girl gambled on Ruth Miller. Ruth Miller was a threat, still unclassified, but a threat just the same. So out she went. And for several weeks it looked like success. Then I came in, then Foy came back. That must have burned her up, but it hasn’t finished her,
not by a long shot. Look at Lillian Harris. One of these nights I’m going to wake up screaming because my girl is walking in my sleep. Walking and talking, telling me that if she’s caught she’ll blow the place up and herself with it. She’s capable of it, too. If she can’t have what she wants, then nobody else can. Life is cheap. See?”

  Dr Kloppel shuddered. “I hope your trouble is an overactive thyroid.”

  “Yah! You know what I’d do if I could? I can’t, of course, but this is it and it would work. I’d hire me a nice, brave girl from a theatrical agency, dress her in this costume, take her over to Hope House at three am, and send her up and down those halls with a faint obbligato of powder-box music.”

  The doorbell rang, a series of sharp, clear rings. He jumped. Dr Kloppel gave him a disapproving look and went to answer it, mumbling to himself. When he returned he had Bessy and Beulah.

  “I thought I told you to phone,” Mark said coldly.

  “Wait,” Beulah advised. She advanced to the table, holding a paper garment bag at arm’s length. At the sight of the smiling mask, she dropped the bag. “Is that what they wore?” she quavered.

  “You sound like me,” Bessy said happily. “It’s ugly, isn’t it? Pretty, but ugly. Think of a whole houseful, running up- and downstairs, peeping at you out of doors… I wish I hadn’t thought of that.”

  Mark said, “Amen. Dr Kloppel, these are my friends. And I suppose this bag holds the suit?” He drew it out, carefully.

  Dr Kloppel carried the mugs over to the bookcase. He refilled them with his back to the room and added two glasses of sherry to the tray.

  “Oh, thank you,” Bessy said before he turned around.

  “We didn’t phone,” Beulah said, “because the place was near Hope House where I said it would be all along. So we simply came. Tom the Cleaner and Dyer. A European peasant of some sort, and a grandson with the same accent and so on. We had no trouble at all. I get along with peasants.”