Death Paints the Picture

by Lawrence Lariar

  “Wonderful!” said Homer. “That’s Mike, all right!”

  “This is all I can get you on Mike, but I figure it is plenty on account of it is a different angle. I am right?”

  Homer nodded. “Now about Nevin?”

  The Shtunk sighed.

  “Yes and no, on Nevin. I check Nevin in the phone book and I find he is living in Westchester—in Scarsdale.”

  I whistled. “That’s class.”

  “No New York address?”

  “Yeah. I find him on Fifth Avenue and Fifty-Seventh Street. It is a floozy dump, this building. I take the elevator to the tenth floor. It is room 1011. On the window I see: ‘Stanley Nevin—Rare Books.’ But the dump is locked, so I leave. I ask the kid in the elevator when I can see this Nevin guy. The kid tells me he ain’t in town often—maybe two, three times a week. I try to pump the kid, but he don’t know nothing. Then I call the Westchester place, but I get no answer.”

  He shrugged. “I give up on Nevin. I grab a train and beat it up here.”

  Swink ordered the next round, while we nibbled peanuts and potato chips and complimented the Shtunk.

  He enjoyed the verbal backslaps, leaned forward on his elbows and grinned at Homer.

  “I done good, Mr. Bull?”

  “You’ve only started, Shtunk.”

  “Only started? Where do I go next?”

  “Back to town—on the next train. You’ll be busy all night, or I miss my guess.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Bedlam in the Bedrooms

  Back in the car, Homer mooned over the pages of his little notebook, while I toyed impatiently with the ignition key.

  “What next?” I asked. “I feel like a moron on a radio quiz program. This heckty-peckty is as clear as the Republican platform.”

  “A bad analogy,” said Homer. “The Republicans have only one platform. This case has two. Number one is the Shipley suicide, if it was a suicide. And number two is the Shipley book and all the cross-currents that lie behind it.”

  “Fine and dandy, Homer. I apologize to the Republicans.”

  “Forgetting the suicide, for a moment,” he went on, “the threads woven around the book point up a blind alley. Almost all of the guests want the book—before publication. The yacht affair would include Trum, Nicky English and Cunningham. I’m not sure about Gavano. I can’t quite place him in the mess. Nor can I explain Nevin, Olympe or Lester Minton. Who stole the notes from Eileen’s house? Why? There is a connecting tissue between the book and the suicide, if I could only find the one small thread—”

  I started the car and swung around toward Woodstock.

  “Whither away, Homer?”

  “Doctor Torrance’s place.”

  “You thinking of breaking in? Wouldn’t a big house like that have a caretaker?”

  “I doubt it. Swink would have taken me through if there was a caretaker.”

  Homer was right, as usual. I parked behind a big barn, abutting on the road. Homer got out.

  “Take a short ride for yourself, Hank.”

  “Why can’t I come along? I’m an expert at opening windows.”

  “Bad technique. I don’t want anybody to notice the car, sonny. Pick me up in about fifteen minutes.”

  I drove back to Kingston slowly, juggling the jig-saw pieces the Shtunk had added to the puzzle. What puzzle? Where was the murder mystery? Had Shipley been murdered? How? Where was the murderer? Homer must have found something, or we would have left Woodstock on the afternoon train. I retraced the pattern of events, groping for an answer to Homer’s unflagging interest in the mess.

  Why had Shipley invited Homer? They were only casual acquaintances. Did Shipley know that his cast of characters at the party would interest Homer? Or did the invitation have a deeper significance—a promise of mayhem? Then of course, there was Grace Lawrence. Perhaps Shipley thought that he would enjoy the byplay between Trum and Homer?

  Gavano suggested an answer to something, somehow. Was he really Shipley’s bodyguard? That would mean that Hugo Shipley was afraid of somebody. It was a silly idea, until I suddenly thought of Lester. Lester had worked for Pindo. Mike had married Pindo’s daughter. At that point the unforged link snapped under the feeble fire of my deduction.

  I scratched my nose and forgot about Gavano. How about Trum? Was there any connection between Cunningham and Trum, other than business? Could be. The idea of a cigarette tycoon making a weekend trip to talk about art work didn’t ring true. Big businessmen leave such petty details to their advertising lackeys. Oh sure, they’ll okay a special art job once in a while. But not very often. It was phoney. The idea of Trum begging Shipley to do the naked dames for his cigarette ads was phoney, I deduced. Trum either came up for an innocuous weekend in the country, or he had another, stronger reason for the trip to Shipley’s.

  Olympe played havoc with my imagination. A doll with a frame as stimulating as hers might very well have posed for Shipley’s succulent heroines. Why, then, the gag about a secretary? Was it Shipley’s idea? Olympe may have played hard to get in New York. Shipley was a notorious heel with the softer sex. Maybe he figured she’d be easier to handle, once under his roof? I crossed this idea out fast. Olympe was no innocent bunny. Olympe could smell that gag in a minute. So what? Could it be that she was in love with Shipley? Could be.

  Back at the barn, Homer was waiting for me. I looked at my watch. I had been gone only twelve minutes. He couldn’t have been inside already.

  “Give up?” I asked.

  “It was easy. The good doctor forgot to board up a cellar window. I kicked it in.”

  “Get what you wanted?”

  “All of it. I wanted the doctor’s record on Shipley. I found his file in order, and got the complete medical, outline on Hugo from 1936 until last Thursday.”

  “Good gravy!” I yapped. “Was Shipley that sick?”

  “I don’t know. Haven’t read it yet. But the fact that Hugo went to the doctor since 1936 may not mean that he was sick at all. Some people use doctors regularly—for periodic check-ups.”

  There was a five mile silence.

  I sighed wearily. “A helluva comic strip case this is going to make—even if Shipley was murdered. It’ll take you months to rewrite this thing for your readers.”

  “Nonsense. I can write this thing in less than a week, Hank. All I need is a murder.”

  I skidded around the last turn and through the gate to the house. Lester rid us of our coats in the main hall.

  “You gents want coffee? They’re all in the dinin’ room.”

  Homer nodded him away.

  I said: “Isn’t it funny—this sudden change in the bedtime hours? Last night every one of these people was in the arms of Morpheus at this hour. Tonight—”

  He chuckled.

  “Don’t you allow for the effect of a suicide and two sluggings on these people?”

  “They didn’t seem excited a while ago.”

  The coffee klatch was gathered in the long dining hall, for dining room it had never been. It was extra long, extra high, extra massive—a hodge-podge of hooked up trappings and casement windows. A heavy oak table stretched the full length of the room.

  Olympe Deming poured.

  “We’ve missed you, Mr. Bull.”

  “Thank you.” Homer smiled around the table. “You miss me, too, Mike?”

  “Oh, yeah. I’m worryin’ myself stiff about you boys. Where you been?”

  “We went down to the drugstore for some aspirin,” I said. “You need any aspirin, Mike?”

  “I got no headache.”

  “You can never tell about headaches,” smiled Homer. “You might get one at any moment, you know.”

  Grace asked: “How’s your head, Homer?”

  “So-so,” he blushed.

  “Stop by at my room later, ho
ney,” she cooed. “I’ve got the swellest tablets for that sort of thing. Much, much better than silly old aspirin.”

  “You’re very kind, Grace.”

  I watched Trum redden to the gills. Homer played with his spoon, exchanging chit-chat with Olympe. There was an unpleasant spot of silence around the table. I counted the heads. Cunningham sat opposite, turning his long jaw to Grace Lawrence occasionally. Trum sat at her side, sucking his lip. There were heavy bags under his eyes, and his fat face was paler than usual. I couldn’t find Stanley Nevin.

  “Nevin gone to bed?” I asked Nicky.

  Nicky looked up from his glass of Scotch sleepily.

  “Went upstairs for his pipe.”

  At that moment there was a shout from upstairs.

  “I say—down there—come and see what’s happened to my room. Somebody’s ransacked it!” It was Nevin’s voice.

  Everybody got up at once, in a pell-mell dash for the stairs. Homer and I held the lead and were the first to barge into Nevin’s room. He stood in the doorway, his handsome face full of real alarm. Homer closed the door on the others.

  The room was a mess. Every drawer in the chest was out, and Nevin’s wardrobe was scattered on the floor, on the bed and piled in funny disarray on the easy chair in the corner. The bed itself had been unmade, upheaved and turned inside out—a confusion of sheets, blankets and mattress. Two suitcases lay asprawl this heap, emptied on the bedding. It was a nightmare of sudden search. And sudden seizure?

  “Anything missing?” Homer asked.

  “I—I don’t know yet. But I can’t understand what anybody would want—”

  “Money? Jewelry?”

  “My money is in my wallet. I haven’t any jewelry worth stealing.”

  He searched the pile of stuff on the beds. “There doesn’t seem to be anything missing.”

  “Have you been downstairs all evening, Nevin?”

  He nodded. “In the library, mostly.”

  “Then this could have happened any time tonight?”

  “Any time from about seven to midnight.”

  Homer sat on the bed. “Tell me, Nevin—aside from money and jewelry—would there be anything else you own that might interest a thief?”

  Nevin was puzzled.

  “What do you mean? What else could I have?”

  “The notes. Shipley’s book notes.”

  I saw sudden anger in Nevin’s eyes. But he let it die.

  “I didn’t get them and they weren’t taken from my room,” Nevin snapped.

  Someone knocked, and I opened the door. It was Nicky English. His face was greenish white. He looked sick with rage.

  “What the hell goes on, Bull?” he almost screamed. “If you think this room is bad, you ought to see what some louse has done to mine!”

  Nicky’s room was at the head of the stairs. We found it in the same state of disorder. Whoever the searcher was, he had done a more thorough job here. Even the rug was turned back in one corner. Nicky was brief and to the point.

  “No harm done,” he said. “Nothing missing. Somebody played a bum hunch. I’ve got nothing worth stealing anyhow.”

  Homer paused in the door.

  “See here, English. I believe you’ve got something—some angle on this business—that may be important. I’m willing to share the glory. I don’t want the news story—you can break it in your column. I’d just like to know why in hell you’re playing hard to get.”

  “Still beating around the bush, eh, Bull? Didn’t you get any dope from New York?”

  “Plenty. But I can’t make it fit. I can’t see, for example, how Marie Parrish fits into this case.”

  Nicky leered in his face. “Trying for a rise out of me, eh? Let me give you a tip, Bull. Keep your nose out of that mess—that’s mine!”

  “Then you know who pushed Marie into the sea?”

  Nicky laughed us into the hall and lit a cigarette.

  “You’re not so dumb, Bull. Maybe tomorrow—”

  Lester came running upstairs, followed by Minnie and the others. “I just been back to my room, Mr. Bull. Somebody been through it with a fine tooth comb!”

  “It’s robbery, that’s what it is,” Minnie shrilled. “I say we should call the police!”

  They made a funny pair, those two. I couldn’t restrain the cackle that rose in my throat and became a number one belly laugh before I could swallow it. Cunningham joined me in the laugh, and I thought I heard Grace Lawrence’s husky gurgle add to the merriment.

  Nicky didn’t think it funny.

  “You crumb cartoonists are all, alike!” he shot at me. “You seem to have a corner on idiotic humor!”

  I didn’t like that. I stepped forward to shove his sharp face into the wall behind him. But Homer caught my arm. He stepped between us nimbly.

  “Go ahead, MacAndrew, I’ve been waiting for this for years,” Cunningham laughed. “Nicky won’t hit back. He only strikes back through his column.”

  Nicky was flustered, even his tongue. He turned on Cunningham. “Why, you cheap advertising pimp!” He began. “I oughta—”

  But he never finished. Cunningham eased his big frame within striking distance and let fly. A sharp right cross smacked Nicky’s head back. It was a clean hit. Nicky caved in, all at once, and before anyone could catch him he was rolling head over tail down the stairway in front of us.

  There was a short squeal from Grace.

  “My God! You’ve killed him!”

  “Not a chance,” said Cunningham. “Rats don’t die that easily!”

  He turned on his heel and walked away toward his room.

  Downstairs, Nicky lay in an angular heap, his head thrown back against the wall and lumped and bloody from caressing the stairs.

  Nevin leaned over him.

  “He’s hurt badly. Better carry him up to his room, Lester.”

  Lester touched Nicky gingerly, and his eyes flickered open. He shrugged Lester away.

  “Leggo!” he snarled, and rose slowly.

  But he didn’t stand long. After a few steps, his knees sagged and he hit the floor again. Lester lifted him easily and carried him upstairs.

  “Better call that doctor again,” said Homer.

  We followed Lester to the phone.

  “Stay with English for a while, Hank.”

  “What for? If he comes to he won’t care for my bedside manner!”

  “You mustn’t let me forget to look in on Nicky later, Hank.”

  “He’s all right, Homer. He’ll live.”

  “Will he? I hope so. I have a question to ask Nicky English—a very, very important question.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Grace Gives Out

  Minnie Minton fluttered around the room, setting it straight. She finished making her bed, gave it a final slap and sat down with a sigh.

  “Now—?” she said, eyeing Homer brightly.

  “Now, Minnie,” he began, “who do you suppose upset your room tonight?”

  “I wish I knew, sir. I just wish I knew! It’s a cryin’ shame, that’s what it is—all these goings on, I mean. Who, you ask? I say, how should I know? Fifteen years it is I’ve been in this line, sir—and never once—well, yes, there was one time when something like this—”

  “You were in the kitchen preparing for tomorrow at about the time when Mr. MacAndrew and I were hit in the studio, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You went to your room after that?”

  “Why no, sir. Fact is, I went out—went for a walk over to Eileen’s. I always walk a bit, after hours. Does me good, sir. Lots of times Lester, he comes with me and we just idle around for a few hours outdoors. Not that he—well, yes, I guess it was around eight when I got there.”

  “And you returned?”

  She eyed
the ceiling for the exact time.

  “Must have been around eleven, sir, or a little after.”

  “But you didn’t go to your room then?”

  “No, indeed,” she piped. “Oh, no, indeed. I—well, fact is, I was thirsty, sir. Eileen, the dear girl, she treated me to a new dish—anchovy paste on toast, it was, with cream cheese. And a treat it is, at that. But I did have the thirst afterwards—an awful thirst for a cup of coffee, as you can understand.”

  “It’s one of my favorites,” said Homer, “especially with a portion of eggs flavored with wine on the toast. You found Lester here when you returned?”

  She shook her head. “He came in after a bit.”

  “You mean he had been outdoors?”

  “I suppose, but I don’t know, that he was probably out with that Eyetalian again, though I shouldn’t say for sure he was, at that.”

  “You mean Gavano.”

  “I do,” she nodded queerly. “A man should always pick his own friends, I always say, and I’m not the wife to be interfering. Though I do think that man is full of evil. But then, Lester and him—well, they’re old friends by now, and I may be all wrong, for no harm has come of it.”

  “Lester knew him before this job?”

  “Oh, no, sir! I wouldn’t say that at all. This Eyetalian has been up here, off and on, a good few years now. Not regular, mind you—but he has some duties to do for Mr. Shipley from time to time. Though he wasn’t a servant ever, if you ask me, what with him sleeping upstairs with the rest. Never on weekends, sir, mind you. This is the first time. Mostly he came during the week, and didn’t stay for long.”

  Lester came in and stood near the bed until Minnie screamed him into a chair.

  “Have you any idea, Lester, who might have upset the three bedrooms tonight?”

  He shook his head dumbly.

  “You weren’t in your room, from early evening until just a while ago?”

  “No.”

  “Where were you?”

  “Outside, mostly. I went out for a walk.”

  Minnie half turned in her seat to snap: “With that Eyetalian, I suppose?”