Call After Midnight (14 page)

“Oh!” Blanche said. “It’s Mrs. Brown. It’s Fiora’s aunt.”

“Please ma’am,” the young policeman said earnestly, “the Captain said I’d missed one of the ladies. He said—” He winced at some painful recollection and said, “Please, ma’am. It doesn’t hurt at all. You see, you just let me roll your fingers one at a time—”

“I’ll do no such thing!” Mrs. Brown was a little woman but plump; her face was red under a heavy coating of pink powder. She glared at the young policeman. “I tell you I’m her aunt. I just got here, this very minute. There’s my baggage. You can’t take my fingerprints—”

Jenny said to the policeman, “There’s some mistake. I’m the one you missed—”

The young policeman whirled around, stared at her, then looked at a paper he drew from his pocket. “Are you Jenny Vleedam?”

“Yes.”

He scrutinized her as if to make sure and then breathed a sigh. “I missed you yesterday. I thought I’d got everybody. The Captain chewed me out—that is, if you’ll be so kind, Miss—”

Blanche came forward and said, “How do you do, Mrs. Brown?”

Mrs. Brown ignored it.

“What did I tell you!” she said and adjusted her flowered hat. She had an unexpectedly hoarse voice.

“Here’s a table,” said the young policeman. “It won’t take a minute!” He remembered his training in police manners and added, “Merely a matter of routine, Miss.”

Jenny looked at the little black whorls her fingers made with a feeling of incredulity. The young policeman thanked her. Blanche said, “Mrs. Brown, you don’t remember me. I’m Blanche Fair.”

Mrs. Brown stared at Blanche; she adjusted her spectacles and suddenly tittered. “Well, I wouldn’t have believed it! How you’ve changed! You were the wishy-washiest little thing. Nothing but a pug face and bushy black hair.”

“Have you seen Peter yet?” Blanche said with unperturbed politeness. Jenny admired her strength of character and also the strength of her cheek muscles which continued to smile.

Mrs. Brown looked just faintly uneasy. “No, as a matter of fact, Peter didn’t expect me. It was just chance that I was in New York. Lucky, wasn’t it?”

“I’m not sure I’d say that,” Blanche said neatly, getting her own back.

“Well, no, of course. I didn’t mean lucky. I meant—well, you see I’d come on to New York from Ohio just to give myself a little treat. I had a sort of windfall. Sold the orchard next to my house. So I thought I’d come to see Fiora. Get myself some new clothes first. Of course I hadn’t let Fiora know. I thought”—Mrs. Brown fiddled with her waxy pearls—“I thought I’d give her a surprise. It was a terrible shock to see it in the morning paper! But I knew my place was here with that poor boy, Peter.”

Blanche said, “Of course, you know Peter.”

“Oh, of course. Certainly. That is I never really
met
him. But Fiora—I knew him through her. He’s my nephew.” She looked around her. “This is really a mansion, isn’t it. Fiora never told me—the fact is I got the impression that they had rather a small place. That’s why Fiora—I mean that’s why I haven’t come to visit before now.” There was a curious but clear inference that she had never been invited.

Jenny looked at the baggage heaped up in the hall; there were two large suitcases, several pasteboard suitboxes with the names of New York stores, and a shoe box. Mrs. Brown had come to stay.

Blanche was looking at the baggage, too. Cal’s face had its closed-in expression. Art Furby put his handkerchief in his pocket. Nobody seemed to know exactly what to do.

Mrs. Brown addressed Blanche. “Where was she murdered?”

Blanche’s nose seemed to lengthen a little. “Upstairs. Really, Mrs. Brown—”

The red flush faded so markedly from Mrs. Brown’s face that it left patches of pink powder standing out. “It’s a dreadful thing,” she said with a sudden quaver in her voice. “Who did it?”

“They don’t know,” Blanche said.

“Dreadful,” Mrs. Brown said. “I haven’t seen Fiora for a long time. It’s been years really. She never came home and what with one thing and another—but she was my niece and—” She scrabbled a handkerchief out of her handbag and dabbed at her eyes. A violent wave of perfume floated out,

Jenny put her hand on Mrs. Brown’s arm. “Perhaps you’d like to sit down and wait for Peter.”

Mrs. Brown took her handkerchief away from eyes which didn’t have a tear in them but instead were very bright and suspicious behind her spectacles. “I didn’t catch your name,” she said with tremendous state and no quaver in her voice at all.

“I am Jenny Vleedam,” Jenny said.

“Jenny—
Jenny
Vleedam! Why, you’re the first wife!” She whirled around accusingly to Blanche, Cal and Art “What’s this woman doing here?”

Nobody answered, which, Jenny reflected rather wryly, was not surprising.

Mrs. Brown’s eyes fastened upon Blanche. “I’ll just say one thing, Blanche, and you know I mean it. I’m Fiora’s nearest relative, her only relative. Any property of Fiora’s comes to me and I want you to understand that right now. All of you. I don’t know who you all are or—but that woman, that first wife, has no business here. And I’ll not let her get Fiora’s fur coat and her jewelry and all her property—”

Cal put his hand on her arm. “I think you’d better see Peter, Mrs. Brown.”

“That’s what I came for,” she said. “And to see the lawyers. I suppose you are the lawyers. Well, Fiora told me she had made a will. She told me how rich she was and while she couldn’t send me any money now, if anything happened to her I’d have—well, never mind that. Blanche, you see to it that my baggage is taken care of. I’m staying here until—as long as it’s necessary. Now then, where is Peter?”

Cal glanced at Art, who nodded toward the library. The young policeman, who had withdrawn somewhere, injected himself and his fingerprint paraphernalia into the scene again. “I’m sorry, Mrs.—er—Brown,” he said firmly, “but the Captain said
everybody’s
fingerprints and not to miss anybody this time, so if you’ll be so kind—”

“Fingerprints, my foot,” Mrs. Brown said and pounded on very high heels in the direction of the library. Her plaid coat swung over her hips; her red and pink flowered hat waved. Jenny felt an unexpected wave of respect for her. She was a rather shoddy, rather vulgar little woman, whom Fiora had apparently cast off like an old shoe. Her purpose in coming was evident: Fiora’s fur coats and her jewelry. It would have been too simple to call it greed; perhaps all her life she had hungered for the fine things which Fiora had acquired.

The young policeman said morosely, “I’ll get hell—”

“Don’t worry,” Cal said, “she really wasn’t here that night.”

Art Furby eyed the young policeman sourly. “Neither was I. You got my fingerprints.”

“That was a mistake—I didn’t mean—thank you very much.” The young policeman went hurriedly out the door.

Mrs. Brown flung open the library door and entered the room like a hurricane. Jenny heard Peter say, “
Who
—” The door closed with a bang.

It didn’t stay closed. It opened almost at once and Captain Parenti came out, rather hurriedly too, as if Mrs. Brown had blown him out of the way. He adjusted his coat, glanced at the little group and the baggage, saw Jenny and said, without any surprise, “Oh, Mrs. Vleedam, I want to talk to you, if you don’t mind. Will you come this way?”

It wouldn’t have mattered if she had minded. She shot a glance at Cal, who was looking very thoughtful. Captain Parenti edged around the heap of baggage and started upstairs. He glanced back at Jenny. “This way, please.”

She followed him, aware of the three faces in the hall watching as she went upward. She passed the step where she had sunk down and lowered her head when Fiora died. She passed the newel post where Blanche had clung and then drifted down, white and still as death, too. “Mrs. Vleedam’s room,” Captain Parenti said.

Jenny must have shrunk back, for he added, “It won’t take long.”

The room had an intangible air of many people having come and gone. The curtains were pulled back and the Venetian blinds pulled up as far as they would go so a cold gray light fell upon the great bed, now covered with a sheet, and a wide chalk mark on the rug at its side. Jenny averted her eyes swiftly from that. The chairs had been pushed a little out of place. There was a faint film of yellowish dust on the table beside the chair where she had sat. The room smelled musty.

“Is anything at all different from the way it was when you left the room to get the milk for Mrs. Vleedam?” Captain Parenti said directly.

“No. That is, the chairs aren’t quite the same. There was a Thermos on the bedside table. That’s gone.”

“Was it your fingerprints my man missed?”

“Yes. It wasn’t really his fault. I was asleep for a long time yesterday and—”

A formidable flush shot over Captain Parenti’s face, which boded further ill for the young policeman. He said, however, “We found some fingerprints on the Thermos and another on the table that we couldn’t identify. Yours?”

“I suppose so. I started to pour out some water for her but she said no, she’d rather have milk.”

“Who suggested this milk?”

“She did.”

“Otherwise you’d have sat right here in the room?”

“Yes.”

“Blanche Fair said she came in to see how Mrs. Vleedam was and that you were asleep. She said you waked up and said you were going to bed.”

“Yes, I did. I was half asleep when I said that. Then Fiora awoke and so did I and I realized that I couldn’t go to bed. I’d promised to stay with Fiora.”

“I see. Of course, you and Mrs. Vleedam must have talked.”

Danger again. Fiora had said, have you been seeing Peter? Fiora had said, are you still in love with Peter? Fiora had said, I’ll never divorce Peter. Fiora had all but said that she suspected Peter. Jenny told her first out-and-out lie. “A little but she was confused. She’d had a sedative.”

He went to a window. His thick figure was outlined against the window but his face with its heavy lidded eyes was in the shadow. “Did Mrs. Vleedam object to your presence here?”

“Not at all. I’ve told you that. She said she wanted me to come.”

“All very friendly?”

“Yes.”

“Remarkable,” the Captain said. “Now I’d have thought that Mrs. Vleedam would have objected very much to your presence. I’d have thought in fact that she might have told you that she wouldn’t let you interfere in any way with her marriage. Seems,” he said thoughtfully, “natural to me.”

J
ENNY DIDN’T SAY ANYTHING.
Captain Parenti sighed and went to sit on Fiora’s dressing-table bench. Behind him were the gay and handsome jars and scent bottles which Fiora would never use again. Jenny looked quickly away from them, too.

The Captain said, “I’m just a country boy, I guess. I don’t understand these chummy divorces. Your husband’s second wife gets shot, he sends for you, his first wife. His second wife agrees to it. Doesn’t seem reasonable to me.”

So they were back at that again. Jenny said wearily, “That’s what happened.”

“Now what I’d think would be natural would be different. I’d think Mr. Vleedam wouldn’t dream of sending for you. I’d think you wouldn’t dream of coming. And I’d think the second wife would object.”

Captain Parenti waited a moment to allow her to speak; when she still said nothing he went on. “Seems to me there must have been some pretty constant communication between you and Mr. Vleedam. How long ago were you divorced?”

“A year—a little over a year,” she said stiffly. “I have not seen him since the divorce—until the night Fiora was killed.”

“But you didn’t have anything to do with that.” It was a statement but there was the quality of repeated question in it, too.

“Nothing;” Jenny said.

“Coincidence,” he said after a moment, “always bothers me. Most of the time it’s not coincidence. Here you are, seeing your former husband for the first time in a year. You admit that there was a—a love scene or something like it—”

“No. It wasn’t that way.”

“There you were though, in each other’s arms. Minutes before Mrs. Vleedam was killed.”

Jenny said, “That really didn’t mean anything.”

“So you told me. Impulse.”

“There was nothing said, Captain Parenti, nothing said at all about Fiora or me or our divorce or anything.”

“Maybe there wasn’t time.”

“Because Blanche and Cal came in so soon?” She leaned forward, earnestly. “That happened just as we’ve told you. And then we heard Fiora scream and we ran—”

“Yes, yes, I know all that.” He rose, went into the dressing room and Jenny caught a glimpse of pink walls and a mirrored cupboard, behind his bulky figure. Three fur coats, Fiora had said, go and look.

He came back. “There’s big windows here. There’s a heavy trellis right outside them, going down to the terrace. Did anybody crawl up that trellis while you were here in the room.

“No! I’d have known it”

Something about her reply seemed to smooth out a curious line around Captain Parenti’s mouth. Then she saw that it was a very quiet little trap for her. A lie—and so easy a lie, merely to say, yes, I thought I heard something but didn’t look—would have been the thing for her to say in the hope of proving the presence of someone—a murderer—from outside the house. She guessed that Captain Parenti would have known it for a lie.

He confirmed her guess for he said, “Trellis wouldn’t hold a man’s weight, without some damage anyway. Vines haven’t been disturbed. At least—no, that’s my view. Now while you were in the kitchen—” He was beginning to pound away, asking the same questions in slightly different ways.

She broke in. “I didn’t see anybody, any intruder, I mean. I didn’t hear anybody in the back, on the stairway or anywhere.”

Cal knocked at the open door. Captain Parenti did not relish the interruption. “Well, what is it?”

“Something I want to report to you.” Cal came into the room. “Something that happened last night. We reported it then to the New York police.”

The line came back around Captain Parenti’s mouth. “Let’s have it.”

Cal sat down on a fragile chair with gilded legs and looked very big and out of place. Captain Parenti listened without a word until Cal had finished with his report of Jenny’s lost keys, the messenger who had no telegram, the empty bottle of pills with their label, the voice speaking to Henry over the telephone reiterating its false claim of a telegram. It took a short time although Cal omitted nothing.