Laura (Femmes Fatales) (15 page)

“Yes,” I said.

“The first thing I discovered is that your radio works perfectly.”

My cheeks burned. “But it didn’t work then. Honestly. They must have fixed it. I told the boys at the electric shop near the railroad station in Norwalk to go up there and fix it. Before I caught my train I stopped and told them. They’ve got my key, that will prove it.”

I had become so nervous that I ached to tear, to break, to scream aloud. Mark’s deliberate hesitancy was aimed, I felt, at torturing the scene to hysterical climax. He told of checking on my actions since my alleged (that was his word) arrival in Wilton on Friday night, and of finding nothing better than the flimsy alibi I had given.

I started to speak, but Waldo signaled with a finger on his lips.

“Nothing I discovered up there,” Mark said, “mitigates the case against you.”

Waldo said, “How pious! Quite as if he had gone to seek evidence of your innocence rather than proof of your guilt. Amazingly charitable for a member of the Detective Bureau, don’t you think?”

“It’s my job to uncover all evidence, whether it proves guilt or innocence,” Mark said.

“Come, now, don’t tell me that guilt isn’t preferable. We’re realists, McPherson. We know that notoriety will inevitably accompany your triumph in a case as startling as this. Don’t tell me, my dear fellow, that you’re going to let Preble take all the bows.”

Mark’s face darkened. His embarrassment pleased Waldo. “Why deny it, McPherson? Your career is nourished by notoriety. Laura and I were discussing it at dinner; quite interesting, wasn’t it, pet?” He smiled toward me as if we shared opinions. “She’s as well aware as you or I, McPherson, of the celebrity this case could give your name. Consider the mutations of this murder case, the fascinating facets of this contradictory crime. A murder victim arises from the grave and becomes the murderer! Every large daily will send its ace reporters, all the syndicates will fill the courtroom with lady novelists and psychic analysts. Radio networks will fight for the right to establish broadcast studios within the court building. War will be relegated to Page Two. Here, my little dears, is what the public wants, twopenny lust, Sunday supplement passion, sin in the Park Avenue sector. Hour by hour, minute by minute, a nation will wait for the dollar-a-word coverage on the trial of the decade. And the murderess”—he rolled his eyes, “You, yourself, McPherson paid tribute to her ankles.”

The muscles tightened on Mark’s cheeks.

“Who emerges as the hero of this plushy crime?” Waldo went on, enjoying his eloquence. “The hero of it all, that dauntless fellow who uncovers the secrets of a modern Lucretia is none other—” Waldo rose, bowed low “—none other than our gallant McPherson, the limping Hawkshaw.”

Mark’s hand, curved around his pipe, showed white at the knuckles.

The quiet and the dignity irked Waldo. He had expected his victim to squirm. “All right, go ahead with it. Arrest her if you think you’ve got sufficient proof. Bring her to trial on your flimsy evidence; it will be a triumph, I assure you.”

“Waldo,” I said, “let’s quit this. I’m quite prepared for anything that may happen.”

“Our hero,” Waldo said, with swelling pride and power. “But wait, Laura, until he hears a nation’s laughter. Let him try to prove you guilty, my love, let him swagger on the witness stand with his poor shreds of evidence. What a jackanapes he’ll be after I get through with him! Millions of Lydecker fans will roll with mirth at the crude antics of the silver-shinned bumpkin.”

Waldo had taken hold of my hand again, displaying possession triumphantly.

Mark said, “You speak, Lydecker, as if you wanted to see her tried for this murder.”

“We are not afraid,” Waldo said. “Laura knows that I will use all of my power to help her.”

Mark became official. “Very well, then, since you’re assuming responsibility for Miss Hunt’s welfare, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t know that the gun has been discovered. It was in the chest under the window of her bedroom in her cottage. It’s a lady’s hunting gun marked with the initials D.S.C. and was once owned by Mrs. John Carpenter. It is still in good condition, has been cleaned, oiled, and discharged recently. Shelby has identified it as the gun he gave Miss Hunt . . .”

It had been like waiting for the doctor and being relieved when the final word killed all hope.

I pulled away from Waldo and stood before Mark. “All right,” I said. “All right, I’ve been expecting it. My attorneys are Salsbury, Haskins, Warder, and Bone. Do I get in touch with them now, or do you arrest me first?”

“Careful, Laura.”

That was Waldo. I paid no attention. Mark had risen, too; Mark stood with his hands on my shoulders, his eyes looking into mine. The air shivered between us. Mark looked sorry. I was glad, I wanted Mark to be sorry; I was less afraid because there was a sorry look in Mark’s eyes. It is hard to be coherent, to set this all down in words; I can’t always remember the right words. I know that I was crying and that Mark’s coat sleeve was rough.

Waldo watched us. I was looking at Mark’s face, but I felt Waldo watching as if his eyes were shooting arrows into my back.

Waldo’s voice said, “Is this an act, Laura?” Mark’s arm tightened.

Waldo said: “A classic precedent, you know; you’re not the first woman who’s given herself to the jailer. But you’ll never buy your freedom that way, Laura . . .”

Mark had deserted me, he stood beside Waldo, fists aimed at Waldo’s waxen face. Waldo’s eyes bulged behind his glasses, but he stood straight, his arms folded on his breast.

I ran to Mark, I pulled at his arms. I said: “Mark, please. It won’t do any good to get angry. If you’ve got to arrest me, it’s all right. I’m not afraid.”

Waldo was laughing at us. “You see, my noble lad, she spurns your gallantry.”

“I’m not afraid,” I said to Waldo’s laughter.

“You ought to have learned by now, my dear, that gallantry is the last refuge of a scoundrel.”

I was looking at Mark’s face. He had gone without sleep, he’d spent the night driving to Wilton, he was a tired man. But a man, as Bessie had said, and Auntie Sue, when she had contradicted her whole way of life to tell me that some men were bigger than their incomes. I had been gay enough, I’d had plenty of fun, enjoyed men’s companionship, but there had been too many fussy old maids and grown-up babies. I took hold of Mark’s arm again, I looked at him, I smiled to give myself courage. Mark wasn’t listening to Waldo either, he was looking at my face and smiling delicately. I was tired, too, longing to cling and feel his strength, to rest my head against his shoulder.

“Tough, Hawkshaw, to have to pull in a doll? Before you’ve had the chance to make the grade with her, eh, Hawkshaw?”

Waldo’s voice was shrill, his words crude and out of character. The voice and words came between Mark and me, our moment was gone, and I was holding air in my closed fingers.

Waldo had taken off his glasses. He looked at me with naked eyes. “Laura, I’m an old friend. What I’m saying may be distasteful, but I beg you to remember that you’ve known this man for only forty-eight hours . . .”

“I don’t care,” I said. “I don’t care about time. Time doesn’t mean anything.”

“He’s a detective.”

“I don’t care, Waldo. Maybe he could scheme and lay traps for crooks and racketeers, but he couldn’t be anything but honest with me, could you, Mark?”

For all Mark saw of me, I might have lived in another world. He was staring at the mercury-glass vase on my mantel, the gift Waldo had given me at Christmas. I looked at Waldo, then; I saw the working of his thick, sensitive lips and the creeping mist that rose over his pale conical eyeballs.

Waldo’s voice taunted and tore at me. “It’s always the same, isn’t it, Laura. The same pattern over and over, the same trap, the same eagerness and defeat. The lean, the lithe, the obvious and muscular, and you fail to sense the sickness and decay and corruption underneath. Do you remember a man named Shelby Carpenter? He used you, too . . .”

“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” I shouted at Waldo’s swollen eyes. “You’re right, Waldo, it’s the same pattern, the same sickness and decay and corruption, only they’re in you. You! You, Waldo. It’s your malice; you’ve mocked and ridiculed and ruined every hope I’ve ever had, Waldo. You hate the men I like, you find their weak places, you make them weaker, you’ve teased and shamed them before my eyes until they’ve hated me!”

Bloodthirsty, Waldo had called me, and bloodthirsty I had become in the sudden fever of hating him. I had not seen it clearly with Shelby or the others, I had never smelled the malice until he tried to shame Mark before me. I shouted bravely; I spoke as if I had known before, but I had been too blind and obstinate to see how his sharp little knife thrusts had hurt my friends and destroyed love for me. I saw it clearly now, as if I were a god upon a mountain, looking down at humans through a clear light. And I was glad for my anger; I exulted in hatred; I screamed for revenge; I was bloodthirsty.

“You’re trying to destroy him, too. You hate him. You’re jealous. He’s a man. Mark’s a man. That’s why you’ve got to destroy him.”

“Mark needs no help,” Waldo said. “Mark seems quite capable of self-destruction.”

Waldo could always do that to me, always diminish me in an argument, turning my just anger into a fishwife’s cheap frenzy. My face felt its ugliness and I turned so that Mark should not see me. But Mark was untouched, he held himself scornful. As I turned, Mark’s arm caught me, pulled me close, and I stood beside Mark.

“So you’ve chosen?” Waldo said, his voice an echo of mockery. There was no more strength in the poison. Mark’s hard, straight, unwavering gaze met Waldo’s oblique, taunting glance and Waldo was left without defenses, except for the small shrill weapon of petulance.

“Blessings upon your self-destruction, my children,” Waldo said, and settled his glasses on his nose.

He had lost the fight. He was trying to make a dignified retreat. I felt sorry. The anger was all drained out of me, and now that Mark had taken my fear, I had no wish to punish Waldo. We had quarreled, we had unclothed all the naked venom of our disappointments, we were finished with friendship; but I could not forget his kindness and generosity, the years behind us, the jokes and opinions we had shared. Christmas and birthdays, the intimacy of our little quarrels.

“Waldo,” I said, and took a half-step toward him. Mark’s arm tightened, he caught me, held me, and I forgot the old friend standing with his hat in his hand at my door. I forgot everything; I melted shamelessly, my mind clouded; I let go of all my taut fear; I lay back in his arms, a jade. I did not see Waldo leave nor hear the door close nor recollect the situation. What room was there in me for any sense of danger, any hint of trickery, any memory of warning? My mother had said, never give yourself, and I was giving myself with wayward delight, spending myself with such abandon that his lips must have known and his heart and muscles that he possessed me.

He let go so suddenly that I felt as if I’d been flung against a wall. He let go as if he had tried to conquer and had won, and were eager to be finished.

“Mark!” I cried. “Mark!”

He was gone.

That was three hours ago, three hours and eighteen minutes. I am still sitting on the edge of the bed, half-undressed. The night is damp and there is a dampness like dew on my flesh. I feel dull and dead; my hands are so cold that I can barely hold the pencil. But I must write; I have to keep on writing it down so I can clear my mind of confusion and think clearly. I have tried to remember every scene and incident and every word he said to me.

Waldo had warned me; and Shelby. He’s a detective. But if he believed me guilty, why are there no more guards outside? Or had he grown fond of me and, believing me guilty, given me this chance to escape? Every excuse and every solace crowded out of my mind by Waldo’s warnings. I had tried to believe that these warnings were born of Waldo’s jealousy; that Waldo had contrived with cruel cunning to equip Mark with a set of faults and sins that were Waldo’s own disguised weaknesses.

The doorbell is ringing. Perhaps he has come back to arrest me. He will find me like a slut in a pink slip with a pink strap falling over my shoulder, my hair unfastened. Like a doll, like a dame, a woman to be used by a man and thrown aside.

The bell is still ringing. It’s very late. The street has grown quiet. It must have been like this the night Diane opened the door for the murderer.

PART FIVE

Chapter 1

In the files of the Department you will find full reports on the Laura Hunt case. As officially recorded the case seems like hundreds of other successful investigations: Report of Lieutenant McPherson; case closed, August 28th.

The most interesting developments of the case never got into the Department files. My report on the scene in Laura’s living room, for instance, read like this:

At 8:15 found Lydecker in Hunt apartment with Laura. He was doing some fast talking to prove that I was plotting to get her to confess. Stayed until 9:40 (approx.), when he left; sent Behrens and Muzzio, who had been stationed at the door, to trail him. I proceeded to Claudius Cohen’s place . . .”

The story deserves more human treatment than the police records allow.

I want to confess, before I write any more, that Waldo’s unfinished story and Laura’s manuscript were in my hands before I put a word on paper. In writing that section which comes between his document and Laura’s, I have tried to tell what happened as it happened, without too much of my own opinion or prejudice. But I am human. I had seen what Waldo wrote about me and had read Laura’s flattering comments. My opinions were naturally influenced.

I can’t help wondering what would have happened if the Deputy Commissioner hadn’t pulled the snide trick of assigning me to the case when he knew I was counting on a Saturday afternoon at Ebbetts Field. The murder might never have been uncovered. I say this without trying to take any bows for solving the mystery. I fell for a woman and she happened to like me. That circumstance furnished the key that unlocked the main door.

I knew from the start that Waldo was hiding something. I cannot honestly say that I suspected him of love or murder. That Sunday morning when he looked in the mirror and talked about his innocent face, I knew I was playing with a screwball. But it was not unpleasant; he was always good company. He had told me plainly that he had loved Laura, but I thought that he had become adjusted to the role of faithful friend.

I had to know what he was hiding, although I suspected the sort of game that would make an amateur feel superior to a professional detective. Waldo imagined himself a great authority on crime.

I played my own game. I flattered him, I sought his company, I laughed at his jokes; while I asked questions about Laura’s habits, I studied his. What made a man collect old glassware and china? Why did he carry a stick and wear a beard? What caused him to scream when someone tried to drink out of his pet coffee cup? Clues to character are the only clues that add up to the solution of any but the crudest crime.

Before that night in Montagnino’s back yard when he told me about the song, Waldo’s talk had made his love for Laura sound like a paternal and unromantic relationship. It was then that I began to see his midnight walks as something besides the affectation of a man who considered himself an heir to the literary tradition. Perhaps he had not spent all of Friday night reading Gibbon in a tepid bath.

Then Laura returned. When I discovered that it was Diane Redfern who had been murdered, I went completely off the track. There were so many crossed wires; Shelby, three unexplained lies, a gold cigarette case. During that stage of the investigation, I couldn’t help looking in the mirror and asking myself if I looked like the kind of sucker who trusts a woman.

Shelby honestly believed that his fatal beauty had led Laura to murder. To relieve his two-timing conscience, Shelby protected her. If I ever saw gallantry in the reverse, that was it.

But Shelby was no coward. He risked his neck that night he went up to her cottage to get the gun. He failed because a yellow taxi was on his trail, and even Shelby was smart enough to know the Department wasn’t spending money just to give one of its men a joy ride. When Shelby saw that shotgun for the first time after the murder, it lay on my desk.

The gun was a clue to Shelby. It was marked with his mother’s initials. C stood for Carpenter, S for Shelby, and D for Delilah. I could see him as a kid in knee pants and a Buster Brown collar reciting pieces for a mother named Delilah.

He told me the gun had been used a month before. He had shot a rabbit.

I said: “Look here, Carpenter, you can relax. If you tell the truth now, we might be able to overlook a few dozen lies that make you an accessory after the fact. Tomorrow may be too late.”

He looked at me as though I’d said out loud what I thought about Delilah. He would never turn State’s evidence, no suh, not a descendant of the Shelbys of Kentucky. That was an underworld trick which no gentleman could sanction.

It took three hours for me to make him understand the difference between a gentleman and an ordinary heel. Then he broke down and asked if he might send for his lawyer.

I let Preble give out the news of Shelby’s confession because I was playing a game with him, too. In world politics it’s called appeasement. From Preble’s point of view, the gun and Shelby’s confession clinched the evidence against Laura. She looked as guilty as Ruth Snyder. We could have booked her then and there on suspicion of murder. A quick arrest, Preble thought, would bring a juicy confession. And orchids for the Department under the efficient administration of Deputy Commissioner Preble.

I could see his hand as clearly as though he’d shown me the cards. This was Friday, and on Monday the Commissioner would be back from his vacation. Preble had little time to garner his share of personal publicity. And this case, since Laura had come back alive, was strictly Front Page, and coast to coast on the networks. Preble’s wife and kids were waiting at a summer hotel in the Thousand Islands to hear over the air waves that Papa had solved the murder mystery of the decade.

We had a knock down and drag out argument. I wanted time, he wanted action. I called him the worn-out wheelhorse of a political party that should have been buried years ago under a load of cow manure. He told the world that I was hanging on to the bandwagon of the party in power, a bunch of filthy Reds who’d sell the country short for thirty pieces of Moscow gold. I said he belonged back with the Indian chiefs who’d given their name to his stinking loyalties, and he said I’d send my old mother out on the Bowery if I thought it would further my career. I am not reporting our actual language because, as I mentioned before, I haven’t had a college education and I keep my writing clean.

It ended in a draw.

“If you don’t bring in the murderer, dead or alive, by tomorrow morning . . .”

“You’re damned tooting,” I said. “I’ll have him stuffed and trussed and ready for your breakfast.”

“Her,” he said.

“Wait,” I bluffed.

I hadn’t a shred of evidence that wasn’t against Laura. But even though my own hands had dragged that gun from the chest in her bedroom, I couldn’t believe her guilty. She might conk a rival with a trayful of hors d’oeuvres, but she could no more plan a murder than I could go in for collecting antique glassware.

It was around eight o’clock. I had about twelve hours to clear Laura and prove that I wasn’t one hundred percent sucker.

I drove up to Sixty-Second Street. When I opened the door, I knew that I had burst in on a love scene. It was the fat man’s field day. Shelby had betrayed her and I seemed to be threatening her with arrest. He was the man in possession, and the deeper the spot she was in, the greater her need for him, the surer his hold. It would have been to his advantage in more ways than one to have her tried for murder.

My presence was poison to him. His face took on the color of cabbage and his fat flesh shook like cafeteria jello. He tried his best to make a woman fall for me so that I could advance myself. It was something like Preble’s remark about my sending my mother out on the Bowery to help my career. Remarks like this one are not so much accusations as revelations. Frightened people try to defend themselves by accusing others of their own motives. This was never so clear as when Waldo began to make cracks about my bad leg. When a man goes so far below the belt, you can be sure he’s hiding his own weakness.

At that moment I quit thinking of Waldo as the faithful old friend. I understood why his manner toward me had changed after Laura came back. He had made a great romance of my interest in the dead girl; it gave him a companion in frustration. But with Laura alive, I had become a rival.

I sat back and listened while he called me names. The shabbier he tried to make me look, the more clearly I saw his motives. For eight years he had kept her for himself by the destruction of her suitors. Only Shelby had survived. Shelby might have been a weak man, but he was too stubborn to let himself be ousted. He had allowed Waldo to insult him again and again, but he had stuck, finding solace in playing a big shot for Diane.

The pattern had straightened out, but evidence was lacking. I saw myself as the Deputy Commissioner might see me, a stubborn jackass working on instinct against known fact. Training and experience had taught me that instinct had no value in the courtroom. Your Honor, I know this man to have been bitterly jealous. Try that on the witness stand and see how far you get.

Under ordinary circumstances I do my lovemaking in private. But I had to turn the screws on Waldo’s jealousy. When I took Laura in my arms, I was playing a scene. Her response almost ended my usefulness in the case. I knew she liked me, but I hadn’t asked for heaven.

She believed that I was embracing her because she had been hurt and I, loving her, offered comfort and protection. That was the deeper truth. But I had Waldo on my mind, too. The love scene was too strong for his sensitive nerves, and he slipped out.

I had no time to explain anything. It wasn’t easy to break away, leaving Laura to think that Waldo had been right in accusing me of using her sincerity as a trap. But he was gone and I could take no chance of losing him.

I lost him.

Behrens and Muzzio let him pass. By my own instructions Waldo Lydecker had been allowed to come and go as he chose. The two cops had been lounging on the stoop, bragging about their kids probably, and not paying the slightest attention to his movements. It was my fault, not theirs.

There was no trace of his great bulk, his decorated chin, his thick cane, on Sixty-Second Street. Either he had turned the corner or he was hiding in some dark areaway. I sent Behrens toward Third Avenue and Muzzio to Lexington and ordered them to find and trail him. I jumped into my car.

It was just eighteen minutes of ten when I found Claudius putting up his shutters.

“Claudius,” I said, “tell me something. Are people who collect antiques always screwy?”

He laughed.

“Claudius, when a man who’s crazy about this old glassware finds a beautiful piece that he can’t own, do you think he’d deliberately smash it so that no other man could ever enjoy it?”

Claudius licked his lips. “Guess I know what you’re talking about, Mr. McPherson.”

“Was it an accident last night?”

“I couldn’t say yes and I couldn’t say no. Mr. Lydecker was willing to pay and I took the money, but it could’ve been an accident. You see, I hadn’t put any shot in . . .”

“Shot? What do you mean, shot?”

“Shot. We use it to weight down stuff when it’s light and breakable.”

“Not BB shot,” I said.

“Yes,” he said, “BB shot.”

I had looked over Waldo’s antiques once while I was waiting for him. There had been no BB shot weighing the old cups and vases down, but he was not such a cluck as to leave unmistakable evidence around for the first detective. I wanted to make a thorough examination this time, but I had no time to get a warrant. I entered the building through the apartment. This was to avoid the elevator man, who had begun to welcome me as Mr. Lydecker’s best pal. If Waldo came home, he was not to have any suspicions that would cause him to leave hastily.

I let myself in with a passkey. The place was silent and dark.

There had been a murder. There had to be a gun. It wasn’t a shotgun, whole or sawed-off. Waldo wasn’t the type. If he owned a gun, it would look like another museum piece among the China dogs and shepherdesses and old bottles.

I made a search of cabinets and shelves in the living-room, then went into the bedroom and started on the dresser drawers. Everything he owned was special and rare. His favorite books had been bound in selected leathers, he kept his monogrammed handkerchiefs and shorts and pajamas in silk cases embroidered with his initials. Even his mouthwash and toothpaste had been made up from special prescriptions.

I heard the snap of the light switch in the next room. My hand went automatically to my hip pocket. But I had no gun. As I had once told Waldo, I carry weapons when I go out to look for trouble. I hadn’t figured on violence as part of this evening’s entertainment.

I turned quickly, put myself behind a chair, and saw Roberto in a black silk dressing gown that looked as if he was paying the rent for a high-class apartment.

Before he had time to ask questions, I said: “What are you doing here? Don’t you usually go home nights?”

“Mr. Lydecker need me tonight,” he said.

“Why?”

“He not feel himself.”

“Oh,” I said, and took the cue. “That’s why I’m here, Roberto. Mr. Lydecker didn’t feel himself at dinner, so he gave me the key and asked me to come up and wait for him.”

Roberto smiled.

“I was just going to the bathroom,” I said. That seemed the simplest explanation of my being in the bedroom. I went to the bathroom. When I came out, Roberto was waiting in the parlor. He asked if I’d like a drink or a cup of coffee.

“No, thanks,” I said. “You run along to bed. I’ll see that Mr. Lydecker’s okay.” He started to leave, but I called him back. “What do you think’s the matter with Mr. Lydecker, Roberto? He seems nervous, doesn’t he?”

Roberto smiled.

I said, “It’s this murder; it’s been getting on his nerves, don’t you think?”

His smile got me nervous. Even the Rhode Island clam was a big talker compared with this Filipino oyster.

I said, “Did you ever know Quentin Waco?”

That woke him up. There are only a few Filipinos in New York and they stick together like brothers. All the houseboys used to put their money on Quentin Waco, who was top lightweight until he got all mixed up with the girls around the Sixty-Sixth Street dancehalls. He spent more than he made, and when young Kardansky knocked him out, they accused him of pulling the fight. One of Quentin’s pals met him at the door of the Shamrock Ballroom one night and pulled a knife. For the honor of the Islands, he told the judge. A little later it came out that Quentin hadn’t pulled the fight, and the boys made a martyr of him. The religious ones kept candles burning in a church on Ninth Avenue.