Laura (Femmes Fatales) (8 page)

She answered without the slightest hesitation, “Of course; it’s been in the house for weeks.”

“This isn’t the brand you usually buy, is it? Did you get this from Mosconi’s, too?”

She answered in one long unpunctuated sentence. “No no I picked it up one night we were out of Bourbon I had company for dinner and stopped on the way home from the office it was on Lexington or maybe Third Avenue I don’t remember.”

She lied like a goon. I had checked with Monsconi and discovered that on Friday night, between seven and eight, Shelby Carpenter had stopped at the store, bought the bottle of Three Horses, and, instead of charging it to Miss Hunt’s account, had paid cash.

Chapter 5

“What took you so long, Mr. McPherson? You should have come earlier. Maybe it’s too late now, maybe he’s gone forever.”

In a pink bed, wearing a pink jacket with fur on the sleeves, lay Mrs. Susan Treadwell. I sat like the doctor on a straight chair.

“Shelby?”

She nodded. Her pink massaged skin looked dry and old, her eyes were swollen and the black stuff had matted under her lashes. The Pomeranian lay on the pink silk comfort, whimpering.

“Do make Wolf stop that sniffling,” begged the lady. She dried her eyes with a paper handkerchief that she took from a silk box. “My nerves are completely gone. I can’t bear it.”

The dog went on whimpering. She sat up and spanked it feebly.

“He’s gone?” I asked. “Where?”

“How do I know?” She looked at a diamond wristwatch. “He’s been gone since six-thirty this morning.”

I was not upset. One of our men had been following Shelby since I’d check with Mosconi on the Bourbon bottle.

“You were awake when he left? You heard him go? Did he sneak out?”

“I lent him my car,” she sniffled.

“Do you think he was trying to escape the law, Mrs. Treadwell?”

She blew her nose and dabbed at her eyes again. “Oh, I knew it was weak of me, Mr. McPherson. But you know Shelby, he has a way with him. He asks you for something and you can’t resist him; and then you hate yourself for giving in. He said it was a matter of life and death, and if I ever discovered the reason, I’d always be grateful.”

I let her cry for a few minutes before I asked, “Do you believe that he committed the murder . . . the murder of your niece, Mrs. Treadwell?”

“No! No! I don’t, Mr. McPherson. He just hasn’t got the stomach. Criminals go after what they want, but Shelby’s just a big kid. He’s always being sorry for something. My poor, poor Laura!”

I said nothing about Laura’s return.

“You don’t like Shelby very much, do you, Mrs. Treadwell?”

“He’s a darling boy,” she said, “but not for Laura. Laura couldn’t afford him.”

“Oh,” I said.

She was afraid I had got the wrong impression and added quickly: “Not that he’s a gigolo. Shelby comes from a wonderful family. But in some ways a gigolo’s cheaper. You know where you are. With a man like Shelby you can’t slip the money under the table.”

I decided that it was lucky that most of my cases had not involved women. Their logic confused me.

“She was always doing the most absurd things about his pride. Like the cigarette case. That was typical. And then he had to go and lose it.”

By this time I’d lost the scent.

“She couldn’t afford it, of course; she had to charge it on my account and pay me back by the month. A solid gold cigarette case, he had to have it, she said, so he’d feel equal to the men he lunched with at the club and the clients in their business. Does it make sense to you, Mr. McPherson?”

“No,” I said honestly, “it doesn’t.”

“But it’s just like Laura.”

I could have agreed to that, too, but I controlled myself.

“And he lost it?” I asked, leading her back to the trail.

“Um-hum. In April, before she’d even finished paying for it. Can you imagine?” Suddenly, for no reason that I could understand, she took an atomizer from the bed-table and sprayed herself with perfume. Then she made up her lips and combed her hair. “I thought of the cigarette case as soon as he’d gone off with the keys to my car. Did I feel like a sucker!”

“I understand that,” I said.

Her smile was a clue to the business with the perfume and lipstick. I was a man, she had to get around me.

“You’re not going to blame me for giving him the car? Really, I didn’t think of it at the time. He has a way with him, you know.”

“You shouldn’t have given it to him if you felt that way,” said the stern detective.

She fell for it.

“It was weak, Mr. McPherson, I know how weak I was to have done it. I should have been more suspicious, I know I should, especially after that phone call.”

“What phone call, Mrs. Treadwell?”

It was only by careful questioning that I got the story straight. If I told it her way, there would be no end to this chapter. The phone had wakened her at half-past five that morning. She lifted the receiver in time to hear Shelby, on the upstairs extension, talking to the night clerk at the Hotel Framingham. The clerk apologized for disturbing him at this hour, but said that someone wanted to get in touch with him on a life-and-death matter. That person was waiting on another wire. Should the clerk give that party Mr. Carpenter’s number?

“I’ll call back in ten minutes,” Shelby had said. “Tell them to call you again.”

He had dressed and tiptoed down the stairs.

“He was going out to phone,” Mrs. Treadwell said. “He was afraid I’d listen on the extension.”

At twenty minutes past six she had heard him coming up the stairs. He had knocked at her bedroom door, apologized for waking her, and asked for the use of the car.

“Does that make me an accessory or something, Mr. McPherson?” Tears rolled down her cheeks.

I phoned the office and asked if there had been any reports from the man who had been following Shelby Carpenter. Nothing had been heard since he went on duty at midnight, and the man who was to have relieved him at eight in the morning was still waiting.

As I put down the phone, the dog began to bark. Shelby walked in.

“Good morning.” He went straight to the bed. “I’m glad you rested, darling. It was cruel of me to disturb you at that mad hour. But you don’t show it at all. You’re divine this morning.” He kissed her forehead and then turned to welcome me.

“Where’ve you been?” she asked.

“Can’t you guess, darling?”

He petted the dog. I sat back and watched. There was something familiar and unreal about Shelby. I was always uncomfortable when he was in the room, and always struggling to remember where I had seen him. The memory was like a dream, unsubstantial and baffling.

“I can’t imagine where anyone would go at that wild hour, darling. You had me quite alarmed.”

If Shelby guessed that the lady’s alarm had caused her to summon the police, he was too tactful to mention it.

“I went up to Laura’s place,” he said. “I made a sentimental journey. This was to have been our wedding day, you know.”

“Oh, I’d forgotten.” Mrs. Treadwell caught his hand. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, comfortable and sure of himself.

“I couldn’t sleep. And when that absurd phone call woke us, Auntie Sue, I was too upset to stay in my room. I felt such a longing for Laura, I wanted to stay close to something she had loved. There was the garden. She’d cared for it herself, Mr. McPherson, with her own hands. It was lovely in the gray morning light.”

“I don’t know whether I quite believe you,” Mrs. Treadwell said. “What’s your opinion, Mr. McPherson?”

“You’re embarrassing him, darling. Remember, he’s a detective,” Shelby said as if she had been talking about leprosy in front of a leper.

“Why couldn’t you take that telephone call in the house?” asked Mrs. Treadwell. “Did you think I’d stoop so low as to listen on the extension?”

“If you hadn’t been listening on the extension, you’d not have known that I had to go out to the phone booth,” he said, laughing.

“Why were you afraid to have me hear?”

Shelby offered me a cigarette. He carried the pack in his pocket without a case.

“Was it a girl?” asked Mrs. Treadwell.

“I don’t know. He . . . she . . . whoever it was . . . refused to leave a number. I called the Framingham three times, but they hadn’t called back.” He blew smoke rings toward the ceiling. Then, smiling at me like the King of England in a newsreel showing Their Majesties’ visit to coal miners’ huts, he said: “A yellow cab followed me all the way to the cottage and back. On these country roads at that hour your man couldn’t very well hide himself. Don’t be angry with the poor chap because I spotted him.”

“He kept you covered. That was all he was told to do. Whether you knew or not makes no difference.” I got up. “I’m going to be up at Miss Hunt’s apartment at three o’clock. I want you to meet me there, Carpenter.”

“Is it necessary? I rather dislike going up there today of all days. You know, we were to have been married . . .”

“Consider it a sentimental journey,” I said.

Mrs. Treadwell barely noticed when I left. She was busy with her face.

At the office I learned that Shelby’s sentimental journey had added a five-hour taxi bill to the cost of the Laura Hunt case. Nothing had been discovered. Shelby had not even entered the house, but had stood in the garden in the rain and blown his nose vigorously. He might also, it was hinted, have been crying.

Chapter 6

Mooney was waiting in my office with his report on Diane Redfern.

She had not been seen since Friday. The landlady remembered because Diane had paid her room rent that day. She had come from work at five o’clock, stopped in the landlady’s basement flat to hand her the money, gone to her room on the fourth floor, bathed, changed her clothes, and gone out again. The landlady had seen her hail a cab at the corner of Seventh Avenue and Christopher Street. She remembered because she considered taxis a sinful extravagance for girls like Diane.

The girl might have come in late on Friday night and gone out again on Saturday morning, but the landlady had not seen her. There were still boarders to be questioned, but the landlady had not known where they worked, and Mooney would have to go back at six o’clock to check with them.

“Did the landlady seem surprised that Diane hadn’t been seen since Friday?”

“She says it doesn’t matter to her whether the boarders use their rooms or not as long as they pay the rent. The girls that stay in places like that are often out all night.”

“But it’s five days,” I said. “Was there nobody to bother about her disappearance?”

“You know how it is with those kind of girls, Mac. Here today, gone tomorrow. Who cares?”

“Hasn’t she any friends? Didn’t anyone come to see her or telephone?”

“There were some phone calls. Tuesday and Wednesday. I checked. Photographers calling her to come and work.”

“Nothing personal?”

“There might have been a couple of other calls, but no messages. The landlady doesn’t remember what she didn’t write down on the pad.”

I had known girls like that around New York. No home, no friends, not much money. Diane had been a beauty, but beauties are a dime a dozen on both sides of Fifth Avenue between Eighth Street and Ninety-Sixth. Mooney’s report gave facts and figures, showed an estimate of Diane’s earnings according to figures provided by the Models’ Guild. She could have supported a husband and kids on the money she earned when she worked, but the work was unsteady. And according to Mooney’s rough estimate, the clothes in her closet had cost plenty. Twenty pairs of shoes. There were no bills as there had been in Laura’s desk, for Diane came from the lower classes, she paid cash. The sum of it all was a shabby and shiftless life. Fancy perfume bottles, Kewpie dolls, and toy animals were all she brought home from expensive dinners and suppers in night spots. The letters from her family, plain working people who lived in Paterson, New Jersey, were written in night-school English and told about lay-offs and money troubles.

Her name had been Jennie Swobodo.

Mooney had taken nothing from the room but the letters. He’d had a special lock put on the door and threatened the landlady with the clink if she opened her face.

He gave me the duplicate key. “You might want to look in yourself. I’ll be back there at six to talk to the other tenants.”

I had no time then to look into the life of Jennie Swobodo, alias Diane Redfern. But when I got up to Laura’s apartment, I asked if there hadn’t been any pocketbooks or clothes left there by the murdered model.

Laura said: “Yes, if Bessie had examined the clothes in the closet, she’d have found Diane’s dress. And her purse was in my dresser drawer. She had put everything away neatly.”

There was a dresser drawer filled with purses. Among them was the black silk bag that Diane had carried. There was eighteen dollars in it, the key to her room, lipstick, eyeshadow, powder, a little tin phial of perfume, and a straw cigarette case with a broken clasp.

Laura watched silently while I examined Diane’s belongings. When I went back to the living room, she followed me like a child. She had changed into a tan dress and brown high-heeled slippers that set off her wonderful ankles. Her earrings were little gold bells.

“I’ve sent for Bessie.”

“How thoughtful you are!”

I felt like a hypocrite. My reason for sending for Bessie had been purely selfish. I wanted to observe her reaction to Laura’s return.

When I explained, Laura said, “But you don’t suspect poor old Bessie?”

“I just want to see how a non-suspect takes it.”

“As a basis for comparison?”

“Maybe.”

“Then there’s someone you do suspect?”

I said, “There are several lies which will have to be explained.”

When she moved, the gold bells tinkled. Her face was like a mask.

“Mind a pipe?”

The bells tinkled again. I struck a match. It scraped like an emery wheel. I thought of Laura’s lie and hated her because she was making a fool of herself for Shelby Carpenter. And trying to make a fool of me. I was glad when the doorbell rang. I told Laura to wait in the bedroom for my signal.

Bessie knew at once that something had happened. She looked around the room,, she stared at the place where the body had fallen, she studied each ornament and every piece of furniture. I saw it with a housekeeper’s eyes then, noticed that the newspaper had been folded carelessly and left on the big table, that Laura’s lunch tray with an empty plate and coffee cup remained on the coffee-table beside the couch, that a book lay open, that the fire burned behind the screen, and red-tipped cigarette stubs filled the ashtrays.

“Sit down,” I told her. “Something happened.”

“What?”

“Sit down.”

“I can take it standing.”

“Someone has come to stay here,” I said, and went to the bedroom door.

Laura came out.

I have heard women scream when their husbands beat them and mothers sobbing over dead and injured children, but I have never heard such eery shrieks as Bessie let out at the sight of Laura. She dropped her pocket book. She crossed herself. Then, very slowly, she back toward a chair and sat down.

“Do you see what I see, Mr. McPherson?”

“It’s all right, Bessie. She’s alive.”

Bessie called upon God, Jesus, Mary, and her patron saint Elizabeth to witness the miracle.

“Bessie, calm yourself. I’m all right; I just went to the country. Someone else was murdered.”

It was easier to believe in miracles. Bessie insisted upon telling Laura that she had herself found the body, that she had identified it as Laura Hunt’s, that it had worn Laura’s best negligee and silver mules. And she was just as positive about her uncle’s sister-in-law’s cousin who had met her dead sweetheart in an orchard in County Galway.

None of our arguments convinced her until Laura said, “Well, what are we going to have for dinner, Bessie?”

“Blessed Mary, I never thought I’d be hearing you ask that no more, Miss Laura.”

“I’m asking, Bessie. How about a steak and French fries and apple pie, Bessie?”

Bessie brightened. “Would a ghost be asking for French fries and apple pie? Who was it got murdered, Miss Laura?”

“Miss Redfern, you remember . . . the girl who . . .”

“It’s no more than she deserved,” said Bessie, and went into the kitchen to change into her work clothes.

I told her to shop for dinner in stores where they did not know her as the servant of a murder victim, and warned her against mentioning the miracle of Laura’s return.

“Evidently Bessie disapproved of Diane. Why?” I asked Laura when we were alone again.

“Bessie’s opinionated,” she said. “There was no particular reason.”

“No?”

“No,” said Laura firmly.

The doorbell rang again.

“Stay here this time,” I whispered. “We’ll try another kind of surprise.”

She waited, sitting stiffly at the edge of the couch. I opened the door. I had expected to see Shelby, but it was Waldo Lydecker who walked in.