Death of an Old Sinner (The Mrs. Norris Mysteries Book 1)

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  The light was gone from her eyes when he moved from between the women.

  “Sit down, Annie,” Mag said, more whining than ever. “I’m a bit weak from nerves, that’s all.”

  “I was worried,” Mrs. Norris said.

  “Oh, and wasn’t she, love? She was of the opinion I’d done away with you.”

  “He’s very good to me, Annie,” Mag said.

  Mrs. Anders, a big woman, bounced into the room with a cup and saucer. “You’ll have some tea from your sister’s pot, Mrs. Norris.”

  Her own nerves were already jangling from the cup she had had at Mr. Robinson’s, and she declined. The gesture, she thought, was made to show her that Mag’s tea was tea and nothing else. They were trying to be wonderful tranquilizers, the lot of them. But when Mag gave her the tray, and remarked that she thought it was time she got up and dressed, Mrs. Norris had very little choice but to accept things as she saw them instead of as she had imagined them.

  “I’m much obliged to you, Mrs. Anders,” Robinson said, and then to Mrs. Norris. “You’ll help her over if she needs it, I’m sure, and have a fine day together the two of you. I’ll be at the shop if you want anything, Annie. Here’s my card with the phone number.”

  Syrup ran no smoother than he did, but for the life of her she could not bring herself to apologize for mistrusting him. She looked at his card when he was gone:

  Printing—old style and new

  Quicker than you can say

  Jack Robinson

  493 Front St., Brooklyn, U.S.A.

  Main 3-6718

  36

  ONE OF THE PUZZLING things about the General’s associates and activities the night before he died was the absence of fingerprints, complete and absolute, from the right door handle of his car. Someone had wiped them off. Which would seem to mean, Jasper Tully reasoned, that someone was in the car with him that day who anticipated trouble, and someone maybe whose fingerprints had a notable history.

  He thought about this after leaving Mrs. Norris at her brother-in-law’s, chiefly because he was on his way to see Johnny Rocco’s man. In spite of Mrs. Norris’ assertions to the contrary, he was not entirely convinced that the General might not have had an old-time association with The Rock which, just for the hell of it, he might have been reviving. There was something about the Twenties. Well, he was over sixty himself, Jasper Tully, and to dig out the few best years of his life, he would find them there. And you couldn’t doubt that retired in the bloom of health, a man like the General would be bored. Having survived many dangers, he was likely to take risks that would shiver more timid men into their beds. No, he decided, it was not at all impossible for the General to have been in some sort of game with The Rock, a game in which he needed money quickly. Perhaps, when he found out Jimmie was headed for Albany, he decided to pull out, and had to buy his way…therefore the business deal with Fowler. Then something went awry. For The Rock, fatally awry. Was he, by any chance, hoisted on his own petard? Did he maybe get something intended for the General in that last ride from the bank? He had left the motor running in a low-slung sports car, something the General also drove.

  All these things the detective turned over and round in his mind, and wondered then in summary, how close to the truth he had come in any one of them.

  It was in the end, the moon-faced character, seen as the chauffeur of the General’s lady friend, that made the link for Tully. If he should turn out now to be the deceased Johnny Rocco’s bodyguard … Tully gave the revolver in his shoulder holster a pat, as though to assure himself of its company.

  However, it was a man almost as tall as himself, and with a face lean-cheeked as a medieval monk’s, who opened the double doors on Johnny’s house to Tully. Rocco’s man protested that he had never heard the name of General Jarvis in this house.

  “Ask me questions,” he said, “I’ll prove it. I’ll prove I tell you the truth. Anything about The Rock.”

  “Was he ever married?” Tully asked.

  “No. No women. Not for a long time. I tell you how it was. During prohibition, he took the pledge, no drink. During the depression, he took the pledge, no women. That way he doesn’t get into no trouble.”

  “Didn’t he have any hobbies?” said Tully.

  “Sure. Sports cars, absolutely authentic.”

  Tully thought about that for a moment. “Absolutely authentic what?”

  “I tell you how it was.” This punk, this gangster, spread out the most beautiful hands Tully had ever seen. “The Austin-Healey, you know?”

  “I know. The one outside the bank.”

  Rocco’s man nodded. “That one. Two in the whole world like it. Do you know who’s got the other?” Tully shook his head. “English royalty. The Duke of Glower. Absolutely authentic.”

  Tully thought of the item in Python’s column which suggested an intimacy between Jimmie and English royalty. He rubbed the back of his neck vigorously. “How do you know?”

  The man shrugged. “I don’t know, not me. I wouldn’t know a Hillman Minx from a baby carriage. But The Rock knew. He used to slap me on the chest and say, ‘Look at her, Slim. Me and the Duke of Glower got one.’ And it was me personal had to bathe her.”

  “Wonderful,” Tully growled. “You didn’t happen to personal bathe a neat little Jaguar lately, did you? Say, the door handle on the right side?”

  “Huh?”

  Tully let it go. He left soon thereafter, the second door closing behind him slowly like the rising of a castle moat in a Hollywood spectacular. Maybe in the next such picture they could use a medieval monk named Slim.

  He went then to see the officials at the bank where Johnny The Rock did his last business.

  37

  WHEN AUGUST FOWLER’S BLONDE receptionist unlocked the office door in the morning she admitted Jimmie Jarvis as well as herself. It was a nice way to start the day, a client like this, well dressed, clean shaven, and up so early in the morning. Considering the mess he had got the whole office into, Mr. Fowler should find a gentleman like this some relief, too. She hinted every way she could to find out who he was.

  Finally Jimmie said: “Remember that tall, skinny man who was in here yesterday, with a sweet little woman?”

  The girl nodded, but you could almost see the lacquer spreading to her face.

  “I’m their lawyer,” Jimmie said. And that saved him from further conversation. He sat in the chair nearest the door, his face averted, and the moment Fowler had taken two steps into the room, Jimmie spoke his name. “I’m accustomed to the courtesy of having my calls returned,” he said when the agent swung around.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Jarvis. I’ve been so damnably busy. Spring season, you know.”

  “For what, fishing?”

  The agent flushed. “Come inside, eh?” He gave instructions to the girl about his calls and his secretary when she came in.

  “Now,” said Jimmie, as soon as the man reached his desk. “What kind of a game were you up to with my father?”

  “It wasn’t a game, I assure you.”

  “I think it was, something very confidential—like this item in Python’s column.”

  “Your father, and I hate to say it of the dead, was a conniving, double-crossing old gentleman. There was nothing he would not do for money.”

  “There were some things,” Jimmie said, wishing to heaven he could think of least one. “What did you buy from him for a thousand dollars?”

  Fowler folded his arms, as though to protect the truth in his breast. “Foolish of me to have tried to cover that up, wasn’t it?”

  “What did you buy?”

  “I suppose you won’t believe this. I merely loaned him the money against the publisher’s advance when it came.”

  “You thought the diary was valuable?”

  Fowler met Jimmie’s eyes. “I thought he needed money that desperately. Early Friday afternoon he called me and offered me fifty percent of the diary for one thousand dollars. I got him the thousand—b
ut declined more than the customary ten percent.”

  “How altruistic of you,” Jimmie said with sarcasm.

  “Funny—I thought you’d say something like that. Now listen to me, Jarvis—it wasn’t necessary for me to tell you this at all. But here it is—sometime between ten a.m. when he was in my office and shortly after noon, he needed money quick and urgently. From our conversation that morning, I’d say it had to do with the Brooklyn gangster’s death—Rocco. He went out of here in a fog when I told him about it.”

  A circle was always round, Jimmie thought. For all the haste and urgency, his father had stopped to buy his mistress flowers. “Ten one hundred dollar bills?” he asked.

  Fowler nodded. “You asked me if I thought the diary that valuable. I did and do—if it’s authentic. At the time I did not consider the thousand such a risk.”

  Jimmie thought about the word authentic. “Do you doubt its authenticity?”

  “While your father was alive,” Fowler said, “I felt no need for such doubts.”

  “In other words,” said Jimmie, “when he was alive to make good—or pay the penalty—a thousand dollars was no risk.”

  “Precisely.”

  “Let me have the diary,” Jimmie said slowly.

  “Do you have one thousand dollars with you?”

  “No, but I have the District Attorney’s office within call.”

  Fowler shrugged. “And of course, you are an honest man, unlike your father. You see, I planned to exploit the book by feeding bits of it to the columnists. I confided this to your father. Little did I know that he would go from this office to that of Lem Python and do a bit of selling himself.”

  “Are you sure of that, Fowler?”

  The agent waved his hands over his head. “Where else did it come from? Python showed me my release—unopened. That’s what the diary’s about, man, the interesting part of it—the amours of your ancestral President and a certain Lady Sylvia Mucklethrop while he was Ambassador to England.”

  Jimmie closed his eyes for a moment, and plainly before them he saw his father at the desk…. “Who is Sylvia?” ….his face cherubic with mock innocence. “The monstrous villain,” he whispered piously to himself.

  Fowler stood at his window, his back to Jimmie.

  “I suppose,” Jimmie said then, “you put a dateline on your release and then accused Python of breaking it?”

  “Exactly. How could I suspect an officer of the United States of such dishonor? Now Python threatens to sue me. Me, mind you, and I already out a thousand dollars.”

  “Sue you for what?”

  “Publicly impugning his honor.”

  “Such sensitivity. Look, Fowler, it was ten a.m. last Friday that you talked over plans for the diary with father, eh?” The agent nodded. “At eleven he was back at his club, at twelve he was at the Mulvany where he stayed until a few minutes before he brought the diary to you, all approximate hours, but close. I doubt if there’s time in there for him to have gone to Python, don’t you?”

  “Where then did Python get his handout?”

  “I don’t know for sure, but I’ll say this, Fowler, a little promiscuity in a family goes further than all its virtues.”

  “A little!” Fowler cried. “You had better read the diary.”

  “I intend to—if I may have it now.”

  Fowler took a key from a ring in his pocket and opened the bottom drawer to a filing cabinet. He gave the red leather-bound book into Jimmie’s hands. “If ever….”

  “If ever,” Jimmie interrupted him. He lifted the book to his nose. “Smells like iodine, doesn’t it—old ink?”

  “That’s what it is!” Fowler cried. “The old reprobate wrote it himself!”

  “I didn’t say that’s what it is,” Jimmie said irritably. “I said old ink smells like iodine.”

  Fowler opened his mouth to say he didn’t say Jimmie said…and then decided to let it go. He went to the door with Jimmie. “Will you shake hands, at least, Mr. Jarvis?”

  “I don’t know why I should. I have a very considerable pride in my father.”

  “You ought to,” Fowler said. “He was the most charming rogue I’ve ever met.”

  “When the estate is settled,” Jimmie said, “I shall see that you get the thousand back.”

  38

  JIMMIE DROVE DIRECTLY TO party headquarters. Mike Zabriski intercepted him. “Hey, young fella, what are you going to do about the item in the Python’s column?”

  “You’ll have my answer by tonight, Mike. In fact, the whole damn town will have it.”

  “That’s more like my boy,” Mike said, and clapped him on the back. A cloud of cigar smoke pursued Jimmie to the inner office door. When Mike was happy he blew his smoke in clouds. In temper, he blew smoke rings, enough of them to strangle a man.

  But not around Jimmie Jarvis, no sir. Jimmie thought, and roused Madeline Barker from her punctuation of the convention keynote address. “Read this for me, Jimmie. See if you get enough breath in the right places.”

  “Right now I’m saving my breath for the right places,” Jimmie said. “And I want you to come with me.”

  Madeline looked up.

  “How would you like to introduce me to Lemuel Python?”

  “I’d be delighted,” she said. “Preferably by cablegram. When?”

  Jimmie looked at his watch. “When he gets up this morning.”

  Miss Barker took her purse from the drawer. “Before he goes to bed. He sleeps from eleven till seven, a.m. into p.m. that is.”

  They intercepted the columnist leaving his office, and Madeline introduced Jimmie.

  “He’s a Boy Scout,” the columnist said, looking Jimmie over while he scratched his ribs with his thumbnail. Jimmie waited, letting his tongue play over the edge of his teeth. The columnist grinned. “Who was it said ‘the righteous are bold?’ ”

  “Nedda Bopper,” Jimmie said. “You’ve got something that belongs to me. I want it.”

  “Come into the Pit,” Python said, and led the way back into his office. The walls were covered with celebrities’ pictures, all signed with love, admiration, and abiding faith. A solid mile of hollow teeth, Jimmie thought.

  “I’ve come for my briefcase,” he said. “My father borrowed it…and laid it down.”

  “Where?”

  Jimmie took a long chance, met Python’s eyes squarely, and answered what he surmised might have been the truth: “Where by the Grace of God, he wasn’t found dead.”

  “Okay, Boy Scout,” Python said. “I’ve been waiting for you to pick it up.”

  “When did she give it to you?” Jimmie tried another guess.

  This one was a failure. “She didn’t give it to me, so stop fishing. I don’t even know she, except as somebody you just introduced into the conversation.” Python opened the middle drawer of his desk and took out the initialed dispatch case. He threw it down on the desk in front of Jimmie. “Let’s just say I found it.”

  “Do you always publish ads in your column like that one?” Jimmie said.

  Python pushed his hat back on his head. “Did you expect me to clear that one with Madeline?”

  “You know, there just might have been some wisdom in that,” Jimmie said. He opened the briefcase and checked the notes within it—the General’s samples of the diary. He merely glanced at one sheet. “Shall we go?”

  Python again snapped the lock on his office door. The hall was crowded with people. At the other side of the elevators was the city editor’s office, almost as crowded as Herald Square.

  “Yes, sir,” Jimmie said as the elevator braked for their floor. “That would have been a wise precaution to take in this case. You see these are my father’s notes for a bit of fiction he was writing based on something that might have happened about a hundred years ago.”

  Python put his hands on his hips, and looked from Madeline to Jimmie, to Madeline, to Jimmie. “Who the hell do you think you’re kidding, Boy Scout?”

  “It’s the truth,
Lem,” Madeline said.

  “Oh, so now it’s the truth,” the columnist sneered. “He sat out the war in England,” Python jerked his thumb at Jimmie, “rendezvousing with this Lady wha’sher-name, and now you try to tell me those intimate tidbits happened a hundred years ago? Oh, sister!”

  Miss Barker flung around to Jimmie. “Jimmie, I did not confirm or deny it. I left that for you to answer.”

  “Thank you,” Jimmie said. “And here’s my answer.”

  As the elevator door opened, he brought his fist up with the drive of a hammer, and catching Python under the chin, he lifted him into the emerging passengers, all of them staggering back into the elevator. “Like we Boy Scouts always say, Python, ‘Be Prepared!’ ” He pushed through the crowd then and walked downstairs. Madeline Barker needed to skip to catch up with him.

  “I think that should be adequate for Python, the Party, and possibly you, my dear,” Jimmie said.

  “It was a masterful blow,” she said adoringly.

  And sure enough, even Python’s journal gave the incident the afternoon headline: JARVIS DEFENDS HONOR, THRASHES PYTHON.

  Miss Barker concocted a lovely story for the reporters, and Jimmie could not be reached for comment.

  39

  MRS. NORRIS ARRIVED BACK at Mrs. Joyce’s from Brooklyn mid-afternoon in a state of some bewilderment. There had been times when Mag seemed her old sour self whose company was pleasure only when you knew she best enjoyed herself in that disposition. Then again, Mag had perked up and talked about the trip she and Mr. Robinson were going to take soon—perhaps to Scotland. “But there,” she ended up, “he’s only talking to cheer me up. He hasn’t even the time to come up and see you in Nyack.”

  Nor the inclination, Mrs. Norris had thought. The best she had come back from Brooklyn with was Mag’s promise to persuade Mr. Robinson that she should spend a week with Annie in Nyack whether he wanted to come or not.

  Mrs. Norris stood outside Helene’s door for a moment listening to the sound of the chisel on stone. She hated to interrupt anyone at work but especially Mrs. Joyce whose power to make a stone look mortal was awesome indeed. But at that moment Jimmie came whistling up the street. He had his own key, the propriety of which Mrs. Norris refused to think on for the moment.