Postmark Murder (4 page)

Laura began to know Matt Cosden only after Conrad’s death. That had occurred suddenly, three years before, yet Conrad had had intimations of its occurrence; his will was found to be completely thought out in every detail, although, typically, he had drawn it up himself with only the most cursory legal aid. It was a simple enough will in its main provisions. He canceled Laura’s debt in money to him; he could never have canceled her debt in gratitude. He divided his very large fortune among his young wife, Doris, and his Polish nephew, Conrad Stanislowski, whom Conrad Stanley had never seen. The Stanislowski provision was the problem.

It was a gesture of family loyalty. It may have been due to a wish to preserve and carry on his name; it came also from Conrad’s deep and intense patriotism. He felt that everything he had done, everything he owned, every happy day in his life which certainly included his relationship to Laura, to her father and mother and his late, but on Conrad’s part, very happy marriage to Doris—all of it was due directly to his emigration to America, his becoming an American citizen and his taking advantage of the rich opportunities America had offered him. He wished to pass on this gift to one of his own blood and name. And there lay the perplexities of the Stanislowski fund.

Conrad Stanislowski, his nephew who lived in Poland, was to receive half of Conrad’s fortune only if he also came to America, became an American citizen and made his life in America. And they could not even find Conrad Stanislowski, let alone inform him of the fund set aside for him.

They had made every effort to do so. Their letters vanished into space, except for the two which were returned and had been opened and were marked “address unknown.” Matt, by then Doris’ lawyer, had said that there was a spot censorship and perhaps it was sheer accident that the letters to Conrad Stanislowski had undergone that. There was, however, an alternative—which was that Conrad Stanislowski had either died or disappeared in the confusion after the war.

Many Poles had been placed in camps; there was a terrific shifting of population. Eventually they began to feel that looking for Conrad Stanislowski over the face of the earth was not only like looking for a needle in a haystack, it was like looking for a needle which had disappeared long before it had been lost in the haystack.

Time went on. Gradually they were beginning to admit failure. Then in August, by way of combing the relief organizations again, Matt had discovered that there was a. child, named Jonny Stanislowski, living in a home for children in Vienna. She had been there for two years. After much correspondence he was convinced that she was in fact the child of Conrad Stanislowski, Conrad Stanley’s nephew.

In October Matt flew to Vienna. There was red tape to cut but the American Army Headquarters and the relief organizations helped him; in November he came back from Vienna with little Jonny.

There was still no news of Conrad Stanislowski. It was not even certain that he had been alive at the time when Jonny arrived at the orphanage; indeed, the more than probable explanation was that he was not alive and that Jonny, somehow, like so many hundreds of other little waifs, had drifted into the orphanage. The circumstances of her arrival were mysterious and so far as Matt could discover Conrad Stanislowski himself had had nothing to do with it. However, there was no doubt about Jonny’s identity; there was her own birth certificate; there was also, in the thin little file labeled Stanislowski, Jonny, a photostatic copy of Conrad Stanislowski’s birth certificate. It was not at all unusual, the head of the orphanage assured Matt—rather wearily, as if nothing that developed in that post-war melee of displaced persons, of homeless children, was really unusual; people took the greatest care to establish their own and their children’s identity with whatever means they could employ. It was tragically, terribly important. Jonny was the child of Conrad Stanislowski, who was the child of Stefan Stanislowski, Conrad Stanley’s older brother; there was no doubt about that.

Matt had taken time in Vienna to explore every possibility of getting in touch with Conrad Stanislowski; his attempt at communication came to nothing.

There were, of course, several reasons to account for Jonny’s presence in the orphanage. The logical conclusion was that her father was dead. Yet there were alternatives; perhaps he was sick, perhaps he was unable to care for her and in some way had contrived a way to get Jonny to Vienna. There was even, Matt had suggested, the possibility that Conrad himself intended to escape Poland and had sent Jonny ahead of him. And then for some reason Conrad had failed to get to Vienna.

That, according to Conrad Stanislowski himself, was the truth.

It had grown later as she stood at the window, staring out at the lake and the sky, thinking of Conrad Stanislowski, of all the circumstances surrounding him and surrounding her long association with Conrad Stanley; trying to discover exactly what Conrad Stanley would have told her to do. Suddenly and reassuringly it occurred to her that Conrad Stanley was a man who believed the best of his fellow beings and acted on that faith. He would have granted Conrad Stanislowski’s request for secrecy; he would have followed his own instinct, as she had done. Yet what did Stanislowski intend to do during those few days?

And why had Laura felt that he was frightened?

It was only then that it struck Laura that Jonny’s reaction was not all right; it was all wrong.

T
HE CHILD HAD SHOWN
no recognition at all of the man who stood in the doorway looking at her. There had not been a smile, a cry of greeting; she had not flung herself joyfully upon him as she flung herself upon Matt, when he arrived. In two years’ time, even though two years is a long time in the life of a child, Jonny could not have forgotten her father. Yet there had not been so much as a flicker of recognition in the still little face, the rigid, sturdy body; her Slav blue eyes had been completely blank and without expression. So then if Jonny had not recognized the man, he was not her father!

He was an impostor! Charlie and Doris and Matt had talked of that possibility; they had warned Laura. There was so much money involved that there might be impostors claiming it. The man of the afternoon with his mysterious request, with his refusal to show any kind of identification, asking her only to see Jonny (which in itself had a certain curious and questionable implication as if perhaps he only wanted to make sure that Jonny was there), calling himself Conrad Stanislowski, was an impostor! She would telephone to Matt at once.

The room had grown darker. Away below, along Lake Shore Drive, the homeward traffic rush had long ago begun; lights from cars swept by in constant four-lane streams. The long two-noted whistle of the traffic policeman came clearly to her ears. She turned on lamps in the room and went into the hall. But with her hand on the telephone she saw the little red Polish dictionary which she had supplied herself with when Jonny came to live with her. Why not question Jonny?

The child understood some English, and Laura had trained herself to find Polish words and painstakingly labored over their pronunciation until there was some current of understanding between her and Jonny. They made, in fact, a game of it, she and Jonny. She snatched up the Polish dictionary and went to Jonny’s room.

It, too, was dark. She turned on the light. Jonny was huddled at the low table, her head in her arms, sobbing convulsively. It was the more touching because Jonny was crying with such desperate silence, as if she must control even the sound of her sobs. Laura ran to her. She took her in her arms. Jonny pressed her hot face against Laura’s shoulder and allowed herself the luxury of sobbing aloud, great, strangling gulps.

So Conrad Stanislowski was really Conrad Stanislowski and Jonny’s father.

A wave of compunction swept Laura. She had been overconscientious, overanxious about her responsibility as trustee, overcautious. She ought to have let father and daughter meet, freely and happily, without question. Even the kitten seemed to eye Laura with disapproval.

She held Jonny in her arms and talked to her. “We’ll see your father, we’ll telephone to him, we’ll have him here right away. We’ll see him, Jonny, he’s not gone, he’ll come back.” She didn’t know how much Jonny understood of the words, but perhaps her tone was comforting, for gradually Jonny quieted. But her sobs had been the heartbroken sobs of a child perplexed by the ways of a world in which a father could appear and then disappear in a matter of moments.

The telephone rang.

It rang and rang again, jabbing insistently, before Laura at last disengaged Jonny’s arm from around her neck and went to answer it.

If it was Matt she was going to make an exception to her resolution and tell him the truth about Conrad Stanislowski. She owed it to Jonny, and no matter what Conrad Stanislowski had said, nor what the reasons for his request for secrecy were, it was more important to restore the confidence in Jonny’s heart which she and Matt had been at such loving pains to build.

She took down the telephone. A woman’s voice said, “Is this Miss Laura March?”

It was a strange voice, flat and toneless, with a heavy foreign accent. Laura said in surprise, “Why, yes. I am Laura March.”

“Come at once. It is Conrad Stanislowski. Come to 3936 Koska Street. Bring a doctor.”

“But who—
what do you mean? What has happened?”
Laura stopped. There was an unmistakable click of the telephone and then nothing but silence.

“Come at once,” the woman had said—what woman, who was she, what did she know of Conrad Stanislowski? But the address was right, 3936 Koska Street. “Come at once. Bring a doctor.”

Conrad Stanislowski had been in an accident! He had had a heart attack—something! Hurriedly she telephoned for her own doctor, Doctor Stevens; he was out on a call, his nurse said; she didn’t know when he would return; however, she took the Koska Street address and the message. Laura then telephoned to Matt.

She had already decided to tell Matt of Conrad Stanislowski and, certainly, in an emergency an implied promise to Conrad Stanislowski meant nothing. Matt was not in his office; she tried his apartment, he was not there. In desperation she tried Charlie Stedman’s office; there was no answer. She tried his club and he was out. There was no use phoning to Doris. “Come at once. Bring a doctor.”

She could not leave Jonny alone. Besides, if Conrad Stanislowski were seriously sick, circumstances might be such that she ought to let him see the child, she thought swiftly. If not—well, if not, she could protect Jonny. Certainly she could not leave the child alone in the apartment. She hurried back to Jonny and washed the tear stains from the child’s little face. Jonny was tired now and weary; when Laura got out Jonny’s little red coat and red hat, Jonny put them on and asked no questions. Laura caught up her own gray coat, full and swinging free from the shoulders, light and soft as fur; she snatched up a white silk scarf with her initials embroidered in red upon it, a scarf Matt had given her, and her big red handbag. Five minutes later Laura hailed a taxi at the entrance of the big apartment house.

It was then around five o’clock and foggy. The streets were jammed with cars and taxis and heavily laden buses. Already, with the early December dusk, it was growing dark. She gave the taxi driver the address and saw his faint look of surprise. “That’s in the Polish section,” he said.

It would be in the Polish section, of course. Laura had not thought of that. She said, yes, and settled back in the taxicab with Jonny beside her. The taxi drew away from the curb and plunged into the streams of traffic. They went along Lake Shore Drive with all its lights and its crowded buses along Michigan Boulevard with its gay glimpses of shop windows already decorated for Christmas. The Wrigley Tower loomed up white and clear at their right and across from it the massive, lighted bulk of the Tribune Tower where brilliant ranks of windows glimmered through the fog; there were always lights in the Tribune Tower, night and day. The bridge luckily was down, although as they crept across it amid the slow traffic Laura could hear the dismal hooting of a barge somewhere in the river below. Away off now at the right a rosy radiance in the fog marked the great bulk of the Merchandise Mart. Immediately after they had crossed the bridge, they turned right again and onto Wacker Drive which slanted crosswise, following the path of the river which was lower and hidden by dusk and fog.

Again, at the bridge westward, they crept slowly along, wedged in with other homeward-bound traffic. The fog here was heavier. Eventually they turned into one of the great business streets which go directly westward. This, too, was lined with stores. The street lights, red and green, were haloed in the fog. They went west and still west, slowly because of the heavy traffic. All at once the names and signs in the stores changed, became bristling and indecipherable consonants. They were in the Polish section. Laura’s heart quickened. It seemed to Laura a long time; the December twilight had turned almost to night when they turned off the business street on to a quieter residential street. She saw a sign suddenly: Koska Street.

There was a drug store on the corner, and a lighted grocery store with a Christmas wreath in one window. Immediately, then, it became a street of houses, and two- or three-flat apartment houses. There were few pedestrians here. It was perhaps at the deserted hour of the night when workers had not yet returned home. Lights glimmered only dimly from windows here and there. They drew up suddenly and the taxi driver peered through the gloom. “I think this is it,” he said.

It was a narrow, two-storied house, painted brown. There was about it a look of neatness and cleanliness yet it was sparse, too, and a little forbidding. There was only a dim light in the hall, behind the high, old-fashioned transom on which were painted very clearly, in large letters, 3936. The house and the street before it seemed singularly deserted. There were no pedestrians, no cars parked at the curb. The doctor, then, had not yet arrived.

For an instant Laura was tempted to stay in the taxi and wait for the doctor’s arrival. The memory of the urgency in the strange woman’s voice over the telephone forbade it. She got out of the taxi and Jonny followed her. Jonny was puzzled; she looked at the house and then at Laura, questioningly. Laura paid the taxi driver, who was curious, too, and lingered a moment, watching them. She led Jonny across the damp sidewalk and up a narrow flight of white stone steps, scrubbed to a state of pristine cleanliness, but which somehow were grim and uninviting. At the top of the steps Laura looked in perplexity at the brown-painted door. There was no bell. What was she to do? And where was Conrad Stanislowski?