The Blonde Died Dancing (7 page)

“Well…”

“What can you see? Without standing on your tiptoes?”

“Practically the bottom of the East River, that’s all.”

“I got a date afterwards. I hope I can get out of here without Mr. Bell seeing me. Leone already bawled me out. I didn’t sleep a wink last night. Sheer nerves. Frankly, I’m scared. Petrified, if you ask me!”

She looked about as frightened as a lollypop, but when I indicated that I was concerned about her, she was delighted.

“Oh, yes!” she said. “Me having the studio across from Anita’s. The Waltzer might decide he has to kill me.”

“No, I think the Waltzer would let you live.”

“But maybe I saw him!”

“Did you?”

“No, but the police thought maybe I did. Honestly, don’t they ask a lot of questions! First it was Mr. Hankins and then it was Mr. Bolling and then it was both of them. But I don’t remember who Anita’s seven o’clock pupil was. I don’t remember ever seeing him. But maybe he’s afraid I did. It wouldn’t surprise me if he did kill me. But I guess it would be best to cross that bridge when I come to it.”

“That’s sensible,” I said. “Hooray, how well did you know Anita?”

“Oh… not so well, I guess. We used to talk like this between classes once in a while.”

“Did you like her?”

“Not so much, but don’t mind me. It was jealousy, pure and simple. Jealousy, it’s a problem with me, I’m the jealous type. Frankly, I find that I don’t enjoy the company of girls as gorgeous as Anita. Who does your hair?”

“Paul, on East Fifty-eighth. Would you like me to get you an appointment?”

“No,” Hooray said. Then she added quickly, “Oh, I didn’t mean to be rude. I want to be friends. I’m going to like you, Hester.”

“Thanks, Hooray. Speaking of friends, did Anita have any special friends here at the school?”

“Not as far as I know. She gave everybody the big hello. I’ve got to admit… she sure had the personality.”

“Did she have any special enemies?”

“Frankly, I don’t know anything about anybody’s enemies.”

“What about Bob Spencer?”

“Him! What about him?”

“Well, Hooray, when I met him I got such a strange feeling from him. He’s so indifferent about what happened to Anita that it bothered me.”

“That’s just him being himself. He doesn’t believe in crying over spilt milk. He says it’s inefficient. He’s scientific about his life. It’s gruesome.”

“You seem to know Bob pretty well, Hooray.”

She nodded. “He got me my job here. He was a pal of an artist I used to pose for a lot when I was modelling. You know what? That crumb! He wanted a commission from my salary the first six months I worked here!”

“You didn’t pay him, did you?”

“No, but he kept arguing and arguing. It wasn’t the money, he said, it was the principle of the thing.”

“Are you sure he was serious?”

“Listen, that guy is only serious. He can’t be any other way. He seems kind of nice… but he’s even serious about that. Being nice is his policy.”

“Hooray, you don’t like him at all, do you?”

“I don’t know whether I do or not. When I’m with him, I like him. Even when we were arguing about the commission, the crumb! But when you get away from him and start to think… oh, I guess I feel sorry for him, that’s how I feel about him. Hester, how old are you? Frankly?”

“Oh, twenty-eight or nine, around in there someplace.”

“Don’t be discouraged. You’ll last for years yet.”

“I hope to live to be ninety at least.”

“I didn’t say live,” Hooray said. “I said last.”

“Hooray, who has that studio there… studio J?”

“Dottie.”

“Dottie who?”

“Harris. She’s adorable.”

“Is she working tonight?”

“Sure. Why not? She isn’t sick.”

“I just wondered if she was scheduled tonight.”

“Of course!” Hooray considered me ignorant. “She has the same schedule I do!”

“Has Dottie worked here long?”

But I wasn’t permitted to do any research on a second member of Mr. Bell’s faculty. My eight o’clock student was saying hello and asking if I was his new teacher, Hester Frost. I admitted that I was and took him in tow. I rather liked the young man. He didn’t seem disappointed that I, not Hooray, was his instructor. That somewhat compensated for the fact that Hooray could instantly tell by looking at me that she was going to like me.

At the nine o’clock intermission
my departing and arriving pupils didn’t give me time to visit Dottie Harris. But at ten I forced the issue. The day’s work was done and I had to get to Studio J before Dottie went home. I just made it.

Dottie had finished patching her make-up; she was closing her lipstick, putting it back in her purse. She smiled a welcome at me and it was a pleasure to see. This girl didn’t have the lush gorgeousness of Hooray Rose, nor the tantalizing beauty of Anita Farrell, nor the smooth handsomeness of Leone Webb. She was only a lovely, pretty girl… and as refreshing as a white violet in a blanket of fat red roses.

“Hello, there!” she said brightly. “Hello, Hester Frost.”

“Oh, you know me.”

“You’re my new neighbor. I’ve meant to drop in to see you, but it’s been one of those days.”

“I’ve got that feeling myself.”

She laughed. “I know what you mean. I remember my first day here. Brutal, isn’t it?”

I went along with that.

“Here,” she said, “sit down. Get off those feet. Have a cigarette?”

“Why, thanks.”

She gave me a cigarette, lit it for me, then did the same for herself. She was regarding me seriously, curiously. I knew what she was thinking.

“No,” I said. “Taking Anita Farrell’s place hasn’t bothered me too much.”

She looked startled, then smiled. “I guess everybody has asked you that. But didn’t you keep wondering if each one of your pupils mightn’t be the Waltzer?”

“No, they all seemed pretty normal to me.”

“You’re so right. Most of them are so normal they’re dull. Oh, some of the duds I’ve had! Deliver me!”

“Well, now, I can name you an exception, Dottie. How about that five o’clock scholar of yours? There’s a virtual dream boy.”

Her laughter filled the studio. “Dream boy is right! I don’t even have a five o’clock scholar.”

“But you did today, didn’t you?”

“Not today or any other day. That’s my dinner break… five till seven. What made you think I had a lesson then, anyway?”

“Well, I passed by and the door was open. The music was playing and I saw this man. I just took for granted you were giving a lesson.”

“Uh-uh, not me.” She took a small engagement book from her purse, flipped it open, found a certain page. “Here,” she said, “see for yourself.”

I saw for myself. At four o’clock Dottie Harris had an appointment with a Mr. Sanford Breen, at seven with a Mr. Albert Fuller. The five and six spaces were empty.

I said, “Does some other teacher use this studio when you’re not here?”

“Not that I know of… why, Hester? Why does it matter, why’s it important?”

“Oh, it isn’t, not at all! But as you said… there are so few interesting men around here. I just wondered who this one was.”

“What did he look like?”

“Young, but probably not as young as he looks. Dark, attractive in a kind of rough, tough way…”

“Hester, if a fellow like that ever walked into this studio, he’d still be here. I’d see to that. But you’re wrong. You must have got the wrong studio.”

“I guess so,” I said.

She stood up. “Listen, if you see him again, introduce me. Hester, it’s nice knowing you. We’ll be seeing a lot of each other, I hope.”

“Let’s make a point of it, Dottie.”

“I’ve got to run now. So long.”

“So long, Dottie.”

I stood for a moment in the hallway, trying to figure it out. I still would have bet that the conversation about Rhinebeck Place had gone on in the studio next to mine. But there was an outside chance that I had become confused in the maze of catwalks above the false ceiling, that the young man and the troubled girl had been in some other room. There was only one way I could find out.

The conference room was empty and I quickly climbed the ladder in the closet. In just a few minutes I had wormed my way to the spot where I thought I had heard the two voices. I looked down through the grill. It was Dottie’s studio. I could see our two red-tipped cigarette stubs still smoldering in the ashtray. There was no other grill close enough to me to make it possible for the voice to have come from some other studio.

There was no doubt that the young man had been in Dottie Harris’ room. But Dottie Harris had not been the teacher to whom he was talking, and I knew no way of finding out who it might have been.

I was discouraged and, crawling back along the cat-walk on all fours, I felt more than a little foolish. There must be a more dignified, more comfortable way of discovering who had murdered Anita Farrell.

I had climbed down the ladder in the conference room closet, I had my hand on the door knob when I heard the voice. I withdrew my hand, stood very still behind the door. Murder or no murder, Detective Lieutenant Bolling was spending entirely too much time hanging around the Crescent School of Dancing.

“…as far as I can gather,” Bolling was saying, “you knew Anita Farrell better than anybody else around here.”

“I wouldn’t say that.” The cool, efficient voice of Miss Leone Webb was hitting a new high in cool efficiency. “What makes you think that?”

“You lived with her. You must’ve been buddies.”

“Yes, I did live with her. But we were hardly buddies.”

“You mean the reverse? You didn’t get along?”

“I didn’t mean that at all,” Leone said emphatically. “I simply mean we never became very good friends. Our sharing an apartment was strictly a matter of convenience. As soon as I could manage an apartment of my own, I moved out of Rhinebeck Place.”

“When was that?”

“Last winter, the beginning of February.”

“So you were there… how long?”

“A little more than five months.”

I heard a door open and close. Mr. Oliver Bell was using his well-oiled voice. “Oh, I’m not intruding, I trust?”

“No, no,” Bolling said. Alongside Bell’s, his voice sounded like gravel in a tin chute. “I’m just trying to get some facts about Anita Farrell from Miss Webb.”

“Oh, I see.”

“But I’m afraid,” Leone said, “that I’m not being of much help.”

Bolling said, “We still haven’t traced any family or relatives. Miss Webb, you don’t even know where she came from… okay, okay, I remember asking you that. But you lived with her half a year! You…”

“A little more than five months,” Leone corrected crisply.

“All right, let’s keep it accurate. But in that time you must have learned something about her. You got some impressions, didn’t you?”

“Very few,” Leone said.

“I’m not surprised at all,” Bell said. “Miss Farrell was a very close-mouthed person. Oh, charming, radiant… but close-mouthed.”

“Okay,” Bolling said. “Close-mouthed. Miss Webb, you were going to say…”

“Well, I gathered she came from somewhere in the west, California, maybe. She never spoke of any family. If she had relatives, it seemed as though they didn’t care about each other and were completely out of touch. I never heard her speak of any school or college. I don’t believe she had ever married. I’m not helping a bit, am I?”

“Were there any special men friends?”

“No, I’d say not. At least, not while I lived with her. She was out a great deal with men… theatres and night clubs. Only occasionally would a man come to the apartment. And then just to pick her up or stop in for just one drink. I do mean exactly that, just one drink. We had an agreement about that, Anita and I.”

“There was no quarrel between you,” Bolling said. “You moved out because…”

“Because I had found a more comfortable place to live,” Leone said patiently.

“How long had Miss Farrell worked here?”

“She came here almost a year before I did. That would make it nearly three and a half years. Is that right, Mr. Bell?”

“Yes, Miss Webb.”

“Mr. Bell,” Bolling said, “don’t you usually ask a prospective teacher for recommendations?”

“No, I rely on my own judgment of people. Frankly, it’s quite sharp.”

“You never inquire into their backgrounds?”

“I don’t find that necessary anymore. I’m interested in what people are now… and I can pretty usually tell after spending a few minutes with them. For instance, this morning I employed a new teacher, Hester Frost. I could see immediately that although Hester had little, if any, formal education, she was quite an intelligent girl…”

I groaned in my dungeon. I could hear the rustling of my professors at Connecticut and Columbia as they turned over in their seats of learning.

Bell was going on. “I could see that Hester had a great capacity for happiness which would delight everyone in her presence, a real and valuable thing for a teacher of any sort to have. A very pleasant girl…”

Dryly, Bolling said, “I’d like to meet her.”

“At the moment,” Bell said, “Hester displays a certain insecurity as signified by her violent blondeness. She is worried, of course, about getting a husband. But some day she will get a husband and make him a fine and devoted wife.”

Bolling said, “How many children, will they have?” Bell said, “I beg your pardon… oh, I see. I’ve been taking up your time. Sorry.”

“It’s quite all right.”

“But, quite frankly, Mr. Bolling, are all these questions about Miss Farrell necessary? Have you lost faith in your plan of finding the murderer by re-establishing Miss Farrell’s lesson schedule? Finding out who her seven o’clock on Wednesday student was?”

“No, that’ll work. It’s just taking a little time… and I’m an impatient man. Or maybe asking questions is just a habit with me. Miss Webb, I’ll just ask one more, then knock off. You still can’t remember who Miss Farrell’s seven o’clock pupil was?”

Leone answered wearily. “I still can’t remember.”

“Miss Webb,” Oliver Bell said, “perhaps if you throw your mind back to the intermission after the seven o’clock lesson, perhaps you might remember seeing Miss Farrell’s pupil leave, go through the reception room…”