“And how long was he at your house?”
“In the afternoon.”
“But how long in the afternoon?”
“Nearly all afternoon.”
“Be specific. Can you remember at what time he arrived and at what time he left.”
“Not exactly. But he got there around two o’clock and he left just a little before supper time around six.”
“So that on the afternoon of Tuesday, June 13, Mr. John Fairleigh was at your house from about two to about six. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“That was the first time that you had seen him in how long?”
“He was—he was there just the week before, on Friday, the day he got back from out West.”
“What time did he come and how long did he stay?”
“I couldn’t say exactly what time he got there. Mid-afternoon about, but he only stayed fifteen, twenty minutes.”
“Did he usually stay such a short time or were his visits of longer duration?”
“He just stayed a short time usually. Just long enough to leave the money, and maybe chat for a few minutes with my wife.”
“And did he leave money on this Friday afternoon you’re speaking of?”
“No, sir. He’d already been out two, three weeks earlier before he went to the Coast and left the money for Edward’s June board.”
“Then what was the purpose of his visit?”
There was a frankly puzzled look in Polk’s eyes as he answered the question. It was impossible to doubt him.
“I dunno,” he said. “It was queer. He rapped on the door and my wife let him in. He seemed nervous like. He said he just happened to be driving by and thought he’d drop in and see if Edward was all right. We thought it was kind of queer, he’d never seemed to be very concerned about him before. But we said yes Edward was fine.”
“Anything else?”
“No, he just stayed about five, ten minutes and then he left.”
“And you didn’t see or hear from him again until last Tuesday when he spent the entire afternoon at your house?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Tell me about this second visit.”
“Well—as I was saying, he got here around two o’clock and we talked, just him and me for about half an hour down to the barn. He looked so tired and so played out that after we got through talking I took him up to the house and had my wife here fix him up some cold buttermilk and cake, and afterwards he said he was that all in, he felt like he could get a mite of sleep. He said he hadn’t been able to sleep o’ nights, and he said out in the country like it is at West Albion maybe he could get a few winks, so we put him to bed in the spare room and he took a real good nap.”
“How long?”
“Oh, I should say about three hours. He got out to our place about two, and we talked a while and he drank the buttermilk, and then went to sleep about three and we didn’t wake him up till six.”
“You’re sure that he was—asleep in your spare bedroom all that time?”
The man looked slightly puzzled. “Why, of course,” he said.
“You didn’t happen to go into the spare room by any chance while he was sleeping?”
“No, sir.”
“So that you really have no way of knowing that he was sleeping there all that time. You just think so.”
“Why yes, I guess that’s it.”
“So that it is possible that he might not have been in the spare room all that time.”
“Why yes, I guess—”
“No, it ain’t.” This unexpected interruption was from the woman. “Of course he was there all the time. I had to go in twice to get some embroidery thread that I keep in the top bureau drawer and I saw him both times, sleeping just as sound as a baby. The second time I went in, I spread the afghan over him. It turned a little chilly that afternoon.”
“I see.” The district attorney accepted defeat and retreated from this line of questioning. For a moment he looked at the two simple creatures before him, a quizzical expression in his eyes, his mouth pursed. Then a second quick direct onslaught.
“What was the purpose of this second visit?” Polk paused, and again there was that hesitant recoil from an expected but dreaded question. When he spoke his voice was low and his eyes dropped.
“He—he told me not to say anything about him being out to our place—or anything about Edward.”
“Why? What explanation did he give for this request?”
“He said that there was this murder of this Mr. Crossley. And it seems that he’d known Crossley for a long time and the police had been asking him about it. And he says that if folks knew that he’d been out to our place they might be asking us about him—I mean about Mr. Fairleigh. Not Mr. Crossley.”
“But how does Edward come in?”
“He didn’t explain that very clear. He just says that if the police got to know about him and us and Edward, it might mean Edward would get taken away from us, so if we loved the boy and wanted to keep him, we’d best not tell the police anything, if they was to come and ask us anything. We was just to say that we didn’t even know a Mr. Fairleigh and that Edward belonged to some dead relation of ours. We were to keep still.”
“But you’re not keeping still,” the district attorney reminded him heartlessly. “What’s the matter? Don’t you really want to keep Edward? Are you just pretending?”
“No, sir, no! It’d break us all up if anything— happened to Edward. But I been scared and worried. We’re not the kind of folks that get mixed up with the police, Mr. District Attorney. We’re good, self-respecting people, and I don’t like this business of lying. At first I didn’t know what to do, I was that worried about what Mr. Fairleigh had asked of me. I didn’t even tell my wife all of it. I just told her that if anyone asked about Mr. Fairleigh not to let on like he’d been to our place on Friday— that was June 9—-or last Tuesday either. I never told her all about it until today after we got orders to come in here.
“We didn’t know what to do. We were scared. But we just know it ain’t right to lie. We’re churchgoing folks and we don’t believe that in the end you profit by it. We don’t know what this is all about. Mr. Fairleigh didn’t tell us anything, and you ain’t told us anything. But we do know that in the end lying don’t pay, so we’re telling you the truth as good as we know it, and we’re asking you please not to let anything happen about Edward.”
His voice had risen and his troubled, questioning eyes pleaded. It was impossible to doubt the man. Stumbling, bewildered, frightened, he was, but it was obvious that he was surrendering to truth with a simple trust in its ultimate righteous efficacy.
When at last the Polks were gone, the door to the inner office opened and Spike walked out. He was grinning broadly.
CHAPTER XXVI - The Way-Down-East Motif
“THERE REALLY should be,” said Spike settling himself comfortably with his chair tipped back and his feet desecrating the district attorney’s desk, “a snowstorm.”
The inspector’s mouth sagged slightly as he glanced out of the window at the pavements blazing with June heat.
“A raging snowstorm,” Spike amplified, “and a girl, young and beautiful with her nameless child clasped to her bosom, cast out into the bitter night by an outraged father. ‘Never darken my door again, you as has brought shame on the pure name o’ Stebbins.’ She stumbles through the blizzard. The babe whimpers. The wind—”
“Philip!” The district attorney interrupted, irritated and sarcastic. “I’m sure it’s all very interesting but I hardly feel that now is the time to indulge your taste for moving picture scenarios.”
“But can I help it,” Spike protested, “if life takes on a Way-Down-East pattern? Is it my fault if fifteen years ago come next Michaelmas, John Fairleigh seduced some innocent Nell and then refused to do right by her?”
Suddenly the puzzled face of the inspector lightened. “I see what you mean. You mean that this Edward is really Fairl
eigh’s child.”
Spike nodded. “Although,” he added, “the evidence of my eyes is against it. I’ve seen the boy and he’s a nice appearing lad. Fairleigh, of course, looks like a sour pickle.”
The district attorney repenting his disapproval of what had at first seemed irrelevant histrionics, seized upon this line of speculation.
“It sounds reasonable,” he admitted. “Fairleigh’s married now and naturally he doesn’t want it known that he’s keeping a child with country people over in New Jersey. Of course he instructs them not to tell that he has been out there. And he never paid out the board money by check. Note that. He delivered the cash in person all these years. Interesting.”
“And don’t,” Spike reminded them, “forget the most interesting point.”
“What’s that?”
“The mother—the ruined, betrayed girl.”
“Yes,” the district attorney agreed, “but I hardly see anyway of finding that out except by direct questioning of Fairleigh himself. And even at that it might have no connection with this case. It explains though why Fairleigh lied about his whereabouts on the afternoon of June 13. He knew that at all costs he must keep this—ah—youthful indiscretion hidden.”
“Just the same,” Spike persisted, “I think it’s rather interesting to consider the fact that the boy is fourteen years old, and that Fairleigh on his own testimony has been working for Crossley for fifteen years.”
“And what of that?”
“Only this: Fifteen years ago Linda Crossley was nineteen years old, just—what do they say?—just blossoming into womanhood. The potentialities of the situation are intriguing.”
Again it was Herschman who first caught the drift of his insinuation. “You mean,” he said, “that Linda Crossley is the mother of this Edward, Fairleigh’s child?”
Spike leaned back, half closed his eyes and let his errant fancy for melodrama have its way. “Can’t you see it all? The girl, young and beautiful and unsophisticated. Fairleigh, man of the world, cad, blackguard, poltroon. Seduction. ‘Who is the man?’ That’s the outraged grandfather. She refuses to tell. They always refuse to tell. It’s one of the conventions. ‘Nobody shall call me a hard man. A home you’ll always have here, though little you’ve done to deserve it. But you can’t bring that bastard brat.’ She takes the child to the father. The least he can do is to support it. He puts it out to board with simple country folk. She returns to her grandfather. Life goes on. Fourteen years pass…
It was at this point that the inspector snatched the conversation from Spike.
“Sure, don’t you see? For years the old man—I mean Crossley—never knows anything about it—I mean who the man was. Then one day he gets hep. He’s always thought that Fairleigh was the soul of honor. Left him $50,000 in his will just on that account. And then he finds out about this that happened fifteen years before. So what does he do?”
“Threatens to change his will,” Spike put in like a bright pupil answering teacher’s questions.
“Sure. And then what happens? Fairleigh—”
“—murders him before he has a chance to do it.” Again the bright pupil.
“Sure!” Herschman was now definitely excited. Spike’s next words were like the sudden sticking of a pin into a balloon.
“But remember this: Fairleigh was in Los Angeles when Crossley was murdered.”
The balloon collapsed. The inspector slumped in his chair. “Sure,” he said, “I forgot that.”
“And,” the district attorney added, “he has an absolutely iron-clad alibi for the afternoon Mrs. Ealing was killed.”
For a few moments there was the silence of defeat. The inspector was cast down, the district attorney was thoughtful. Spike lit a cigarette and yawned. Presently the district attorney broke the silence with another question.
“And just how does all this—I mean Fairleigh and an illegitimate child and Linda Crossley—how does it all tie up with the Ealing murder?”
The inspector shook his head. It was too deep for him. Spike puffed meditatively at his cigarette.
“Perhaps it does,” he said, “if we leave Linda Crossley out of the picture. She, I take it, is not the only woman who in the spring of 1919 was capable of bearing a child.”
“Doesn’t that leave it open to a rather large field?” the district attorney asked with a mild attempt at humor.
“Possibly. And then again it might narrow it down. Narrow it down to the other woman in the case—Maysie Ealing. Don’t forget that she’s Fairleigh’s private secretary.”
“But how—”
Spike waved them to silence. “Perhaps,” he said, “I forgot to mention the other day, another little trip I made.”
From his pocket he drew a newspaper clipping and handed it to the district attorney and the inspector. It was a picture of a young man and beneath it a caption: “Will anyone knowing the whereabouts of a fourteen-year-old boy resembling this photograph communicate…”
“Who does it look like?” Spike asked.
The two men studied the picture closely. The district attorney’s brows knit in a frown of concentration.
“Someone I’ve seen, but I can’t quite…”
It was the inspector, trained for many years in the police lineup who made the identification.
“It looks a bit like that Ealing girl. Like it almost might be her brother.”
“It is,” Spike said.
Briefly he told of the picture’s appearance in the Saugus Index and his own visit to the Index office.
“My suspicions,” he explained, “were aroused by a photograph which I saw in the newspapers of Maysie Ealing herself.” Thus blandly did he eliminate the necessity for revealing a certain visit— under false pretenses—to 143 West 110th St., the day after Mrs. Ealing was murdered.
“The picture was inserted, according to the records of the editor, by—” He paused irritatingly.
“—by Maysie Ealing.”
His audience did not grasp the significance at once, so he continued.
“It looks very much as if Maysie Ealing in a delayed attack of maternal impulse were trying to locate her long lost child. Note that it says ‘a fourteen year old boy resembling this photograph.’ Perhaps even when the child was only a tiny baby it was obvious that it didn’t take after its father, that it looked like its mother and its mother’s brother. The natural inference would be that this likeness would increase with the years. Hence…”
He indicated the clipping.
He rose and reached for his hat. “I think,” he said, “I’ll be looking into this.”
At the door he paused as if struck by a sudden disconcerting thought.
“Still and all,” he said, “suppose all this is true. How the hell are those damn stamps mixed up in it?”
CHAPTER XXVII - Wanted—an Unmarried Mother
THE TELEPHONE OPERATOR was simple. Of course he had to make some concessions. The quiet eating place, so subtly conducive to conversation, which he suggested was vetoed in favor of a chop suey restaurant that boasted a Chinese jazz band. It was noisy and hot and the food was none too good, and dancing on the crowded patch of floor in the center of the room was mainly a matter of stationary wriggling and swaying. But there were booths. Nice secluded little booths which partially shut out interference and gave a sense of confidential intimacy.
And at last along about eleven the telephone operator grew really confidential. Her remarks were, of course, prompted by her escort’s interest in the higher things of life like unemployment and crime and the Crossley-Ealing murder.
“If you ask me,” he said significantly, “from what I can make out from the papers, there’s something between that Maysie Ealing and this lawyer—whatsisname—Fairleigh.”
“You’re telling me,” she said. “I’ve suspected it for months, ever since she came to our office. In the first place she’s awful uppish. You know. She doesn’t have much to do with the rest of us girls. Keeps to herself.”
&nbs
p; “How’d she happen to get the job there?”
“When Fairleigh’s secretary quit seven months ago to get married, he advertised for a new one. There were plenty of girls already in the office that would of liked the job. It pays pretty good, but no, he had to go and advertise. He got a whole pack of mail and then picked out six or seven of the answers and had the girls come in. She was one of ’em and she got the job.”
“Did he seem to have known her before—that is, before she answered the ad?”
“I couldn’t be sure about that. I will say this for him, that none of his calls that I’ve ever listened in on are women. I mean women personally. Always just business.”
“But did you ever catch them—in—ah—”
“You mean in a compromising situation?” Not for nothing had the telephone operator absorbed the refined euphemisms of the tabloids.
Spike nodded eagerly like a Sunday school superintendent about to hear a risqué story.
“Well no, I really never did notice anything that way about them. But I’ll tell you what I did notice.” She leaned forward and lowered her voice.
“Of course, I haven’t told this to anybody. Anyway not to any of those cops that have been up to our place off and on for the last two weeks. I don’t like the girl and I think she’s a snip and all that, but just the same I don’t want to get her in any worse trouble than she is already. But I’ll tell you why I think there’s something fishy about her being there.”
She paused disconcertingly to demand a cigarette and a light. Spike supplied them with undue alacrity. She continued.
“The first thing I noticed about her after she came was that she was always staying late, so I decided that she was either dumb and couldn’t get her work done on time, or was just a plain fool. Two or three nights a week she’d be still there at half past five or six working.
“And then one night I had a date. I met a fellow down town and we came to this very place for dinner. I like this place, don’t you?”
She surveyed it with approval. The orchestra struck up a new tune. Her eyes began to dance and her shoulders to sway. “That’s that swell new song from the ‘Varenne.’ Come on…”
A Most Immoral Murder Page 14
