Call After Midnight (13 page)

She said blankly, “I didn’t know you had a house.”

“Oh, yes. I had to buy one. A year or so ago. I’ve got four sisters and eleven nieces and nephews all converging upon New York at odd times. I got tired of trying to bed them down in my apartment or get hotel reservations for them. Go on and pack. We’ll get new locks for your apartment before you come back.”

She said after a moment, “Peter won’t know where I am.”

Cal walked into her bedroom.

She followed to find him calmly taking clothes off their hangers and thrusting them into her big suitcase which had stood in the nearest closet. “Do you want this?” he said holding up a blue wool dress. “Do you want this?” It was a dinner dress, not worn in over a year.

She was forced to take over. He looked at his watch. “You can always come back and get anything you need. Don’t worry about toothpaste and stuff. My sisters have never been known to take away everything they bring. There’s a perfect cosmetic shop in every spare bedroom. Are you ready?”

“Are any of your sisters there now?”

“Not that I know of. The only incumbent when I left home an hour ago is Henry, twelve, in town to get new braces on his teeth. God knows how many have arrived since.” There was a gleam of amusement in his eyes. “Worrying about the proprieties, staying in a bachelor household?”

She thought of the doorknob that had turned under her hand. “I was thinking that I want never to see this place again,” she said truthfully and reached for her red coat. He took it out of her hands, raked through the little coat closet off the living room, and pulled out a brown tweed coat. He put it around her shoulders. “Less conspicuous.” He took up her suitcase.

She stared at him. “Can you possibly mean that someone would follow me?”

“As I said, let’s err on the side of safety. Ready?”

He closed the door behind them. The apartment house was so quiet that Jenny felt like tiptoeing down the corridor. She saw that Cal looked into the elevator and made sure it was empty.

He did the same thing in the little foyer below and then told Jenny to wait while he strolled, as if casually, out to his car which stood at the curb. He came back. “Looks all right. Come on—”

But he saw to it that they crossed the sidewalk quickly. She cast a look around and could see nothing but the dark outlines of parked cars, a street light. There were no dog walkers, no late home-comers, no one standing in the shadow of some vestibule. But this was impossible, she thought dully. Nobody would follow her with intent to murder.

Cal lived in the sixties, she knew that from his address in the telephone book. It was no time for a ride up Fifth Avenue, a sudden swerve across Eighty-fifth Street, back along Madison, several apparently aimless treks around blocks and back again. Cal’s eyes returned again and again though to the little mirror above. Once he said, “I don’t intend to scare you to death. I only want to be sure—I think it’s all right.” He pulled up and maneuvered into a position parallel to the curb.

“Here we are. Run on ahead of me. The vestibule door is open.”

She ran across the sidewalk; the grilled door yielded to her touch and she entered a small, black and white vestibule. The house was one of the narrow, pleasant houses which line the cross streets of New York, with steps going down to the kitchen and big windows above. Cal came after her, unlocked the house door and ushered her into the house.

A hall ran back to what seemed to be a dining room. Stairs went up. She had an impression of shining orderliness, good old rugs and the clean smell of floor wax. She went up the stairs ahead of Cal and came out in another hall, wider, between what appeared to be a long living room at one side of the hall and a small study at the other.

The stairs continued upward and a voice said, “The dog did nothing in the night time.”

She looked up. A freckled face hung over the banister; it was topped with a red deerstalker cap. Cal addressed the face. “Do you mean to say you’ve brought that confounded pup?”

The freckled face eyed her. “Is that your girl friend?”

“This is Mrs. Vleedam. Jenny, this is my nephew, Henry.”

“How do you do?” the face said politely and went on, “because if she is, she must be the one the man telephoned about.”

Cal strode over to the banister. “What man? When?”

“At least I think it was a man. Eighteen minutes ago. I noted the time precisely. Sherlock always did that—”

“Never mind Sherlock. What did he say?”

“He said he had a telegram for Mrs. Somebody but I couldn’t hear the name and I said there wasn’t any lady here except Mrs. Cunningham. She’s Cal’s housekeeper,” he added in a polite aside to Jenny. “
She
likes dogs. Well, anyway,” he went on hurriedly with a glance at Cal, “then he hung up. Or,” said Henry conscientiously, “
She
hung up. I really couldn’t tell. It was sort of mumbled as if he—or she—had a cold.”

“I see,” Cal said after a moment. “Well, you go back to bed.”

“
Is
she your girl friend?”

“If you don’t go back to bed this minute there’ll be no Easter show at Radio City for you,” Cal said pleasantly.

“Oh,” said Henry, and disappeared.

“Bad child psychology,” Cal said, “but it always works.” He turned to Jenny. His voice had been light; his face was sober.

“So it’s true,” Jenny said in a whisper. Something seemed to drop away from her; the customs and guards of a familiar world vanished.

C
AL PUT HIS HAND
around her arm. “The thing to do right now is have some sleep.”

He led her upstairs, past a closed door from behind which came a puppy yelp so swiftly cut off that it suggested a hand over the puppy’s mouth, and into a pleasant bedroom.

He put down her suitcase, came to her, put his hand under her chin and tilted her face up. “Go to sleep now, you’re safe here,” he said as gently as if she were a child, kissed her cheek lightly and went away.

The odd thing was that she did go to sleep and she did feel safe, in the big comfortable four-poster, whose lavender-scented sheets and freshly covered eiderdown attested to the thoroughness of Mrs. Cunningham’s housekeeping. Small marks of Cal’s sisters did appear here and there in the way of an opened jar of talcum in the bathroom, one high-heeled pump on a shelf and three lacy handkerchiefs, neatly washed and ironed, lying on a table presumably waiting for their owner to reclaim them.

In that atmosphere the familiar and trusted world reasserted itself; it was impossible to believe that she, Jenny Vleedam, could be the object of attempted murder. No, there had to be some mistake.

The next day she went back to the house on the Sound with Cal. The trip was accomplished with a surprising lack of opposition on Cal’s part.

Mrs. Cunningham brought her a breakfast tray herself; she was gray-haired, she wore gold-rimmed pince-nez; she looked severe and accepted Jenny’s presence in a matter-of-fact way as if Jenny had been some other sister, who had merely been mislaid up to then. There was a friendly warmth in her steely gray eyes when she went about unpacking for Jenny and she hoped the puppy hadn’t waked Jenny early. “Henry’s housebreaking him,” she said. “I told him he’d have to get the pup out regularly every two hours. There’s no other way. Mr. Cal said he hoped you had a good sleep and he’d like to see you a moment before he goes to the country. Now do eat your toast before it gets cold.”

The word country was like an alarm. In twenty minutes Jenny went downstairs and found Cal in the small study. He was reading the Sunday papers and sprang up when she came in, wadded up the papers, shoved them into a brass log basket and said good morning.

“It’s in the papers.”

“Oh yes. No need to read them. Nothing new.”

“There’s something about me—”

“Naturally. Something about all of us, you and me and Blanche and Peter. I’m going out now to see Peter. I only wanted to be sure that you’re all right. I want you to stay in the house while I’m gone. Mrs. Cunningham will look after you—”

“I’m going with you.”

“Not again!” Cal said. “Jenny, we can’t go through this again.” He sat down in one of the leather-covered chairs and put his head in his hands.

“I’ve got to know what’s happening to Peter.”

Cal lifted his head with a sigh. “All right.”

He told Mrs. Cunningham who was busy in the dining room below that Mrs. Vleedam wouldn’t be in to lunch after all but they’d be back that night. Mrs. Cunningham nodded, unperturbed.

It was a peaceful, rather cloudy Sunday morning with the streets almost deserted except for a boy’s figure half a block away guiding a puppy up to a tree and pointing at it sternly. Henry flashed a grin at them as they passed and the puppy jerked from his leash and galloped, all legs and clumsy paws, back toward the house. Henry gave a shout and galloped after him.

It was another ride accomplished almost in silence. Along the parkway the willow trees were turning from vivid yellow to soft green. “I phoned to the drugstore,” Cal said once, breaking the silence. “It’s closed on Sunday.”

After a long time Jenny said, “I still cannot believe—”

“Whoever it was guessed that you had come to my house,” Cal said shortly and seriously.

“You mean it was somebody who knows us. Cal, those keys of mine were in my handbag. The murderer could have got them while I was with Fiora.”

Cal nodded. “Oh yes. But why? You haven’t thought of a reason, have you?”

“No,” Jenny said dismally.

They had turned into the road that led to the Sound and the house when Cal said, almost as if it were an afterthought, “There’s got to be some connection, of course, with Fiora’s murder. Lightning really doesn’t strike in the same place very often. I’m going to tell Parenti the whole story of what happened last night. I think it’s best though not to tell Peter, at least right away. Will you be guided by me?”

Jenny’s heart gave a sickening kind of lurch. “
Peter
wouldn’t have tried to get into my apartment. Peter wouldn’t have left that pillbox there! Besides, he was in the country.”

“Actually he could have been in town when he phoned to you. Or he could have driven in after he phoned, there was time. I’ll find out if I can. Now don’t yelp at me. I don’t for a moment think it was Peter. But unless we were followed from your apartment to my house last night, as I don’t think we were, then whoever phoned and talked to Henry has got to be somebody who knows us both and would guess that you might be at my house. It rather limits the suspects.” He hesitated and then said carefully, “I’ve got a feeling that it’s better to go a little cautiously until we see what Parenti’s going to do. Peter would make a great stir about it. It’s the executive habit. He’d give orders, pound away at everybody. Whoever tried to get into your apartment could be warned off so we’d never get at the truth. Oh, maybe I’m wrong, but it seems to me better to keep it to ourselves for the present. Except for Parenti.”

It didn’t seem to matter. She said, “All right.”

Cal turned into the driveway and said, “What’s all this?”

The house lay ahead of them. There were cars in the driveway, two police cars, one limousine with a uniformed driver lounging against it, a village taxi and an open sports car.

Cal stopped his car with a jolt.

“What’s happened?” Jenny cried and flashed out of the car.

Cal jumped out, too, and came around to meet her. “Wait a minute,” he said quickly. “Probably nothing. Oh, there’s Blanche.

Blanche, of course. She emerged from a clump of firs at the curve of the driveway. She wore a jade green suit which would have been titled a country suit at a style show but was clearly intended for wear on Fifth Avenue. Jenny automatically noted its fluid lines and style. She wore her small string of pearls and correct low-heeled pumps. Not a hair was out of place but her usually brilliant coloring of skin was still dull and her nose still a little pinched. She saw them. “Oh, you’re here again.”

“What’s the matter?” Cal said.

“Matter?”

“All these cars.”

“Nothing. The police are talking to Peter. The hired car is mine. The sports car is Art Furby’s. The taxi—I don’t know about that.

A taxi driver came out of the house, looked at them with a sharp curiosity which suggested that the news of the murder had shaken the whole village, went down the steps to the taxi and drove away.

Blanche said, “I’ll just speak to the driver of my car,” and went to the long limousine. She was carrying a handsome handbag. She tipped him and said, “I’ll not be going back to town today. Thank you.”

The door of the house opened and Arthur Furby came down the steps to meet them. He was wiping his hands on a handkerchief and looked, for once, thoroughly ruffled. “What’s the matter with
you
?” Cal said, surprised. “Damn fools have just taken my fingerprints!” He thrust his handkerchief back in a pocket, gave himself a kind of shake and recovered his composure. “A matter of routine. But I can’t say I liked it.”

Blanche said, “Why did they do that?”

“Don’t ask me!” Art shrugged. “I think they’re running around like chickens with their heads off. I’m surprised they didn’t take that taxi driver’s fingerprints.”

“Never mind,” Cal said with a flicker of a grin, “you’ve joined the club. They’ve got my fingerprints, Peter’s—”

“Not mine,” Jenny said.

Cal looked surprised. “They were supposed to get everybody’s. At least it’s part of the form—”

Art interrupted. “There’s a woman just standing in the hall with a lot of baggage. Who is she?”

“Oh,” Blanche said. “She must have come in that taxi. I suppose somebody ought to see who—I mean if it’s a reporter.”

“It’s not a reporter,” Art said. “All that baggage.” Cal went up the steps. The others followed him. In the hall a woman in a flowered hat, big earrings, spectacles, bracelets, three strands of spurious-looking pearls and a large lapel pin set with flashing rhinestones was arguing with a young policeman. “I tell you I wasn’t here that night! I don’t know anything about it. You can’t take my fingerprints, young man. I’m a citizen and I object—”