The End of Mr. Garment

by Vincent Starrett

  Young Mr. McDaniel was writing furiously on his scratch pad. It was great stuff, all right; and maybe he didn’t know it! Talk about a mystery! An old dress and a suicide note swiped to make a murder look like self-destruction! And by somebody, obviously, who had access to the home of the Curly Popes. By somebody—by George!— who knew the habits of the Popes—knew they would be away during the winter months—knew that he could himself escape long before the fraud could be discovered.

  It was really pretty swell.

  “Somebody’s up to something, Mrs. Pope,” he observed owlishly. “Somebody stole your dress and that note with all this mystification in mind.”

  Myra Pope agreed. “So that detective said. Mr. Ghost thinks the note was a stroke of genius.”

  “Ghost?” echoed the reporter. He cocked his head at a thoughtful angle, and tried it with a new inflection: “Ghost?”

  “I supposed you knew him,” said Mrs. Pope. “You ought to, for if anybody knows what this is all about it’s Mr. Ghost. He has the ugliest face and the kindest eyes I’ve ever seen,” she added reflectively.

  McDaniel got hurriedly to his feet. “I’ve just remembered that fellow,” he said. “If Cicotte has got hold of Walter Ghost, this case is over, right now. He’s the sort of detective you read about in books. His name,” he added informatively, “is Ghost.”

  Mrs. Lexington Pope sank into a softer chair, when he had gone, and racked her brains for an answer to the puzzle. The dress, she realized, might have turned up in the possession of anybody, for she kept no track of her discarded apparel; but the suicide note presented a mystery that baffled thinking. She had forgotten writing it, until this amazing revelation of resurrection. That she had not destroyed it, after her agony of grief, seemed now incredible. Yet who, finding it, would have cared to keep it?

  The reporter was right, however, and so was the detective—and that nice Mr. Ghost. Whoever had taken it had taken it for a purpose; and that purpose had been fulfilled in the murder of this unknown and pitiful creature who had worn her castoff dress.

  Chapter Nine

  On Instructions from Ghost, Mollock finished the inquiry he had begun on the day of his return to New York. He went again to the populous building in Fifth Avenue, and this time he was not followed by young Mr. McDaniel. In one of the pigeonholes of the tall filing cabinet, or rather in a suite of them, still functioned the dignified firm of Charlesworth & Charlesworth.

  The senior Charlesworth, however, was not in. He had returned from Chicago, it was admitted, sometime previously. Mollock left word that he would come back later in the day. In the circumstances, it occurred to him, Stella Birdflight should be the next best bet.

  Happily he had her address. She had given it to him on the train. Without bothering to telephone, he taxied northward to an apartment in one of the West One Hundreds and surprised the actress at a hasty breakfast. It was only eleven in the morning, and she had barely arisen—a circumstance, she told him, which he might have foreseen.

  Mollock apologized and stared a bit. So this was Stella Birdflight in the morning! It was evident to him, however, that she thought she looked well enough. Her draperies were loose and attractive— as indeed was Stella herself—but to Mollock she was obviously a woman of forty determined to preserve the impression that she was still a bit of Chelsea.

  He accepted a cup of coffee so strong that it strangled him, and in retaliation told her bluntly why he had come. There was no use beating around the bush with Stella, anyway.

  “What I want to know, Stella, is what you’ve got on Charlesworth—or think you’ve got.”

  “Wot ho!” exclaimed Miss Birdflight, startled. “That’s asking for information. What’s put it into your head that I’ve got anything on Charlesworth?”

  “The fact is,” explained Mollock, “I went to Charlesworth’s place myself the day I got back. You were already there. I heard your voice—and I didn’t go in.”

  “You followed me, you mean.”

  “On my honour, no! If I’d known where you were headed, I’d have gone with you.”

  She threw back her head and laughed. “Is this official, Duns? Whom are you working for? The police?”

  Mollock grinned a trifle sheepishly. “No, I suppose I’m just meddling. It’s a habit of mine. I’m certainly on friendly enough terms with Cicotte, but I’m not working with him. If I’m working with anybody, it’s Ghost.”

  “That’s your friend the amateur detective, isn’t it? I understand he’s very charming. Well, what about the case, Duns? Is it going to pan out? I thought for a while this Amersham mystery was going to help solve it; but that begins to look like a fizzle.”

  Mollock shrugged. “Until they identify the dead woman, it’s impossible to say whether there’s a connection. Officially, the Garment case is at a standstill, as far as I know.”

  Miss Birdflight’s fingers flirted here and there beneath his nose—pouring coffee, lifting rolls, depositing butter upon his plate. She was determined, apparently, that he should see them.

  “I’ve nice hands, anyway, haven’t I, Duns?” she observed, at length.

  “Very nice indeed.” He realized that he had been backward. “The fingers of an artist—long, slender, tapering.” He lightly kissed the tips of them. “I’ve often thought, you know, that we are all curiously decorative, after a fashion—of assorted colours as we are, and fringed at the extremities.”

  “But how do you like my ring?”

  “By Jove!” cried Mollock. “It’s a beauty! What a blind mole I’ve been. And on the third finger, too. May you be happy, my children!”

  “He’s a professional man,” said Miss Birdflight complacently.

  “Good!” cried Mollock. “How did he lose his amateur standing?” A weird idea seized him. “Good Lord! You’re not engaged to Charlesworth?”

  “Of course not! He’s a lawyer.”

  “They’re useful to have in the family,” agreed Mollock. “Did you need a lawyer?”

  “It’s because I’ve got one that I don’t mind telling you, now, why I went to see Charlesworth,” said Miss Birdflight. “I mean, I’m no longer interested in what Charlesworth can do for me.”

  She laughed a bit brassily. “When I went to Charlesworth I needed a job—or thought I did. I told you I had one for the fall; but I wasn’t very sure of it. It’s true that Taylor is reviving Crichton, but I haven’t been offered a part. Charlesworth and Taylor are old friends. You see?”

  “M-m-m, vaguely,” said Mollock. “You brought pressure to bear on Charlesworth?”

  “I suppose it was blackmail,” confessed the actress cheerily. “A genteel form of it. Of course, I didn’t threaten anything. Merely told him casually what I had heard, and a little later casually asked him to put in a word for me with Taylor.”

  “Ah!” said Mollock. “Very subtle!”

  “If you’re going to be sarcastic, I won’t tell you what I heard,” warned Stella Birdflight; “and I think your Mr. Ghost would like to know. In a nutshell, I overheard a row—a regular high cockalorum—between Garment and Charlesworth the night Garment was murdered.”

  “The deuce you did!” Mollock followed his exclamation with a frown. He couldn’t understand it.

  “You’re thinking that I was at the Kimbark party—as you were,” said the actress. “So I was; but before I went to the party I was at my own hotel. It happened also to be Charlesworth’s and Garment’s hotel. I had dinner in the main dining room. At another table—not too far away—were Garment, Charlesworth, Mr. Van Peter, and that good-looking English secretary—Anger. They were having dinner together.”

  “Là là!” said Mollock. Anger had said nothing about a row.

  “You see? It was just before they were to start for the Kimbarks’—a little after eight o’clock.”

  “Were you alone?”

  “Quite. I was at a table along the side; the others were at a larger table in the centre of the room.”

  “And you heard a
quarrel? You know what it was about?” Why the devil, Mollock wondered, hadn’t Anger or Van Peter mentioned the circumstance?

  “I know what Charlesworth says it was about. He told me the day I called on him. Maybe he’s telling the truth. Maybe he isn’t. That’s why I’m telling you all this—so you can tell your Mr. Ghost, and Mr. Ghost can find out.”

  “Go ahead,” said Mollock.

  “Well, there was a row. I saw Garment and Charlesworth get up from their chairs and move over to the door. That brought them a little closer to my table. Charlesworth seemed to be trying to impress something on Garment and Garment kept shaking his head, or nodding it—he did both —and making motions with his hands. Finally he practically pushed Charlesworth away from him, and I knew what he was saying. I didn’t hear the words, but I saw the way his lips moved. He told Charlesworth to go to hell.”

  “Had Garment been drinking?” asked Mollock quickly.

  “I suppose so. He looked a little that way. Not too much. Anyway, Charlesworth was mad—I could see that. The argument ended, and they went back to the table. They were still there when I left the restaurant.”

  “H-mph,” commented the story writer. “I suppose it could have been all perfectly innocent.”

  “Sure it could; and again it couldn’t. But a few hours later Garment was murdered, and naturally I thought of what I’d seen.”

  “What did Charlesworth say about it?”

  “Well, I mentioned what I had seen happen, and he admitted there had been ‘a few words.’ He said Garment was getting a bit too liquored up, and he was trying to persuade him to stop—since he had to go on to the Kimbarks’ and meet a lot of people.”

  “Sounds reasonable,” observed Mollock. “He ought to have said something about it, though. How did he take your genteel blackmail?”

  Miss Birdflight shrugged. “Oh, he laughed at first, then told me there was no point in my mentioning the quarrel at that late date. Said it might be misunderstood. That was my cue, and after a few more minutes I broached my little proposition. He said he’d do what he could, but not on account of my knowing about the quarrel.”

  “Has he done anything?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t care any more. I’m going to be married, and I’m going to give up the stage.”

  Mollock went thoughtfully away. On the whole he believed Charlesworth’s account of the quarrel, which sounded very plausible. He even sympathized with the agent’s suppression of the incident in his testimony. Mention of it would only have invited inquisition and undesirable publicity for Charlesworth. He supposed he had better look in on the literary agent, however—particularly as he had left his name, saying he would be back.

  Charlesworth, when he called again, had returned to his office and was more than affable. A tall man, over six feet in height, wearing the old-fashioned Vandyke that one associated with old-fashioned family physicians.

  “So Miss Birdflight decided to blab, did she?” he exclaimed good-humouredly. “I suppose I was an ass not to mention the quarrel myself, when I was questioned; but at first I forgot it, then it seemed a bit like gratuitously throwing suspicion on myself.”

  “I know!” Mollock was genuinely sympathetic. “Let’s forget it. I’m sure Ghost will feel as I do about it; and neither one of us is an official investigator. But look here, Mr. Charlesworth, what do you think of the case, just between ourselves? Have you any pet ideas?”

  The literary agent shrugged. “What can I say? I suppose I’ve entertained all the usual suspicions. Between ourselves, Mr. Mollock, Garment was a bit of a swine—although a profitable one, as far as I was concerned. I mean, one can’t help feeling that, in all probability, he had it coming to him— whoever did it.” He paused. “Are we discussing the case in confidence?”

  “Absolutely! I’ll report to Ghost, of course, but not to another living soul. Ghost doesn’t report to anybody unless he has something final to report. Even then, if he thought justice would be better served by silence, he’d keep silence.”

  Charlesworth drummed his fingers on the desk.

  “I’m not fanciful, Mr. Mollock. If I were, I’d be a novelist myself, I suppose—not a novelist’s pimp! Writing people are strange creatures, you know, even the best of them. Do forgive me! I quite forgot for a moment that you were in that line yourself.”

  Mollock laughed delightedly. “Go the limit,” he invited. “I’ve met stranger specimens than you ever dreamed of. After all, you handle only the successful ones.”

  “Well, as I say, I’m not fanciful. Looking at what happened with the eyes of a practical man, I’m bound to ask: Who had the opportunity to kill Garment? Motives are important, of course; but without opportunity they don’t have a chance to function. As I see it, only three men really had the opportunity—the cab driver; Anger, the secretary; and Mr. Van Peter. Anything else seems to me fantastic and outside the evidence.”

  Mollock nodded his understanding. “I am fanciful,” he said. “Too much so! But your point of view is important. It’s a fact that in seeking the dramatic, whip-lash sort of solution one often loses sight of the simple, staring fact. Of course you realize that if Anger or Van Peter had anything to do with it, they must have acted in collaboration?”

  “I suppose they must have.” Charlesworth seemed reluctant to let them off. “They were together when Garment was placed in the cab. Yes, it seems to be a fact we can’t get around. And as I can’t quite imagine such collusion, or any reason for it, I’m reduced to believing the cab driver did it. There, of course, suspicion may run riot, since it’s natural to ask whether the fellow did it on his own responsibility or for somebody else.”

  “It has run riot,” said Mollock dryly. “Cicotte’s been all over that aspect of the case, and so has Ghost. If Spessifer was an agent, the people who fall under suspicion are the same people who fall under suspicion if he wasn’t—that is, Kimbark, Anger, Van Peter, and you.” He chuckled at sight of the other’s dismayed face. “You, in fact, more than the others, Mr. Charlesworth, because you were off-stage. Sort of directing genius in the wings, eh?”

  Charlesworth was troubled. “I hadn’t thought of that. I hope nobody is nursing the idea. Why Kimbark, by the way?”

  “Why not?” retorted Mollock pertinently.

  “There were—ah—certain rumours around—er —but, of course—” Charlesworth was cautious to timidity, it seemed to Mollock.

  “They would be difficult to prove? Probably they would. There are usually oaken doors between adultery and the outer world. The participants are curiously averse to publicity. But the mere rumour might be enough to get a man slightly killed. What do you think of the rumour, yourself, Mr. Charlesworth? You were Garment’s manager.”

  “In some matters,” answered the literary agent hastily and firmly. “Of Garment’s private life, so to call it, I know no more than you do about Kaffir babies.”

  Mollock laughed. “There’s a lot I don’t know about that subject,” he admitted. “Well, good luck to you! I’ll dash along and see Ghost, if he’s in. But, Lord! I wonder how it will all end!”

  Charlesworth shook his visitor’s hand. “There’s an old saying,” he observed, “that death, dessert, and Sarah Bernhardt always come in the last act.”

  The fiction expert found Walter Ghost dealing himself a hand of cards, in the library. He liked solitaire, on occasion, he said, because it helped him to think. The game itself became a purely automatic background for whatever occupied his mind.

  “I’m glad you looked in, Duns,” said the amateur cordially, dropping a black nine carefully upon a red ten. “I wanted a chat with you before I left town.”

  “You’re going away?” Mollock was surprised and dismayed. When Ghost left town it was usually with the other side of the world as his first objective.

  “I’m afraid I’m going to Chicago with Cicotte. I held out against it, but perhaps it’s just as well. He’d be sure to mess things up himself.”

  “There’s simply
nobody there,” argued the novelist. “The whole gang is on Pope’s yacht—except Spessifer—and it won’t make port for some days.”

  “I know!” Ghost nodded. “That’s the advantage of going now. You see, until Kimbark is proven innocent, he’s everybody’s choice as the guilty man. He may even be the guilty man. One way or another, something has to be done about him. I suppose there are some servants about his place who can be persuaded to let us see the house. If not, so much the better—we’ll simply commit burglary.”

  “Good Lord!” said Mollock. “What for?”

  “Well, for one thing, the weapon has to be found, Duns—the knife that killed Garment. A lot depends on it, in all probability. If Spessifer used it, then he got rid of it somewhere along the line of his drive. But every inch of the way has been searched by Cicotte’s men, and advertisements have been inserted in the newspapers on the chance that it was picked up. With no result. Garment was a living man, as far as we know, when he entered the cab at Van Peter’s curb, and he was certainly a dead man shortly before or after he reached Kimbark’s. I have—”

  “By golly!” exploded the story writer, suddenly interrupting. “I’ve just tumbled. Well, you old rascal! You’re going to Chicago to look into my tree theory!”

  Walter Ghost looked surprised; then he laughed softly. “No,” he responded, after a moment, “that’s not my idea. But I’ll tell you what I’ll do: if my own theory fails, I’ll tell Cicotte about yours, and he can turn the entire force loose in the park, if he cares to. I’d forgotten that ingenious notion of yours, Duns, which was not very thoughtful of me.”

  Mollock looked sulky. “What is your own theory, then?” he asked.

  “I was about to say, when you interrupted, I have an idea of my own about the knife; and when I mentioned it to Cicotte he seemed enthusiastic.”

  Mollock crossed his legs and glowered. “May I hear it, too?” It seemed to him that he was being left out of things without much consideration for his feelings.

  “Of course! I think Mrs. Kimbark has it hidden in the house somewhere.”