Gentle Murderer

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  “No. But it makes such a difference knowing you’re in the house. It’s like … I don’t know what it’s like, a happy bird maybe … that you hear singing off somewhere, and feel glad just to know that it’s in the world with you.”

  “I feel that way too, Tim. When I know you’re upstairs, it doesn’t make any difference whether I see you or not. The house just seems different.”

  “Then why do you want to go to work?”

  She saw then that she could not tell him directly. She would have to make him see the need for it first. “It’s a good job and I’ll be home Saturdays and Sundays, and by five-thirty every night,” she said, attempting indifference. “Now tell me your news, Tim. That’s what’s important. It’s about your work, isn’t it?”

  He began to walk back and forth across the room. “Yes. It’s about my work. How can I tell you, Katie? It’s pouring out of me like … like water down a cascade. Only it has shape. Shape as well as substance. Always before I used to get a great blob of color, as it were. Gushing.” He clenched and unclenched his fists to demonstrate the splash. “Now I can contain it without losing it. I can hold it long enough to fashion the structure I want it to fit. And in the reading, it sounds like thunder, like the tumultuous rolling of storm clouds up to the very explosion of the heavens … and then it’s quiet again. I’m doing that part now, and Katie, I can write the quiet parts now. And I’ve never been able to before. Did you ever hear a flower laughing?”

  She giggled. “I’ve seen them laughing.”

  He smiled, looking at her and then away again as though at some picture he had conjured up. “How could you hear them in the bellowing of car horns and the choking of buses? Some day you’ll hear them. I’ll see to that.”

  “I want to, Tim. Very much.”

  “When I was a boy I used to sit in a field of daisies and I’d watch them rock back and forth, and if I’d listen very hard, I’d hear them chuckling. And the wind would come up a little stronger, and they would just seem to roll with laughter.” He cocked his head, listening again for the sound. He turned to her. “I’m getting all that now, Katie. If only I can go on this way. I keep feeling that I must hurry before the storm breaks again.”

  “Don’t hurry, Tim,” she said very gently. “You don’t have to hurry now.”

  “Bless you, my dear. If this is what I think it is, please God, it’s you that it belongs to more than it does to me. You know that you’re the flowers, don’t you?”

  “I hoped I was. I wanted to be part of it, I mean. I didn’t dare to hope really.”

  “Always dare to hope, Katie. It’s the least we can dare. There was an expression my mother used to use: we’ll live in hope if we die in despair.”

  “That isn’t very hopeful,” she said.

  “No, it isn’t,” he said thoughtfully. “It just happens to have the word hope in it.”

  “Did you love your mother very much, Tim?”

  “No, I didn’t,” he said slowly. “She crushed me like a flower she was trying to save. She sucked all the life out of me. Why?”

  “No reason especially. I was thinking of mama. She’s like that too. When she’s feeling affectionate she just loves you to death. Sometimes I wonder if I’m going to be like that some day.”

  “Women are like elephants,” he said for no reason she understood. He began to move about the room.

  “Tim, listen to me for a minute. Sit down and rest.”

  He hesitated.

  “Please, Tim. This is such a good evening for us.”

  He did as she asked.

  “Tim, you said that I’m the flowers. I’m very glad. It’s more important to me than anything in the world. I’m not ashamed to say that. I’ve never been so happy in all my life. But if I’m the flowers, the way I see it, mama’s the storm …”

  His head jerked up, but she was studying her fingers as though the words she was trying to find were written on them.

  “I mean, mama’s a practical woman. She likes you, but she likes her rent and board money, too. We can coax her along for a while maybe. She likes music, and poetry is kind of like music. She’d like it if she knew. But she’s got a quick temper. She’s liable to flare up and say something nasty. Then it won’t be quiet any more for you …”

  His sudden tension eased off. “Just a few more days, Katie. Then I’ll go out and look for work.”

  “That isn’t what I mean, Tim. You ought to have all the time you need. It isn’t right that you shouldn’t. Tim, that’s why I got a job. Don’t say anything. Just listen to me. I’ll be able to give you eight dollars and fifty cents a week. I’ve got it all figured out. If you gave that to mama she’d be satisfied. I’m sure she would. It’s just the idea of paying something. And you don’t eat much. Then some day, if you wanted to, you could give it back without anyone ever knowing.”

  “Dear, dear Katie,” he whispered after a moment, unable to speak aloud. The tears welled up in his eyes.

  “Don’t cry, Tim. Please don’t. I don’t ever want to see you cry again. This is fun. It isn’t sad.”

  He sat where he was, his hands knotted in his pockets.

  “There’s always a way if you try hard enough. We’re just lucky,” she went on, tumbling over the words in her eagerness to get them out. “And I’ve got over two dollars now. Take them and tell her you’ll make the rest up for this week some time.”

  “If all my lifetime were spent in it,” he said then, “it wouldn’t make up the rest for this week, Katie.”

  She got up and moved about the room, busy with ash trays and doilies and the curtains. “Oh gosh,” she said. “These last few days have been wonderful.”

  “Good days, Katie. Nothing dies but something lives …” his voice trailed off with the words.

  “What are you thinking, Tim?” she asked from the window.

  It was a few seconds before he answered. “I almost went away that day when you came up at night and asked me to the party. I had enough money in my hand that night. But I knew it was money I could never touch. And I knew there must be no more of it—ever again.” He smiled. “Don’t look so serious, Katie. There are things that must be done. Evil that must be destroyed, for it corrupts the world. I know now, seeing how beautiful you are, that I was right.”

  Again she turned from him. “Tim, read something to me, please. Not what you wrote if you don’t want to. But something that’ll sound like it. Something you like.”

  He got up and went to his room for the books eagerly. Katie breathed deeply of the night air. There was a little smell of fish on it and a soft dampness. There were so many things he said that she did not understand but that she was content in his saying in her presence. When he returned and sat beneath the lamp turning the pages of the beok until he found the passage he wanted, she chose a darker corner of the room from which she could watch him, her face in the shadows.

  “We’ll save Shelley for the flowers,” he said, “or maybe Keats. But this is the stuff that storm is made on.” His voice gained strength from the words, and she thought, while she listened to more words that she understood only to be beautiful, of the jeering cries on the street corner … “Why don’t you get a man?” There would never be anyone more of a man to her than this dear, quiet one who loved her only with his eyes. Tim read:

  Who lit the furnace of the mammoth’s heart?

  Who shagged him like Pilatus’ ribbed flanks?

  Who raised the columned ranks

  Of that old pre-deluvian forestry,

  Which like a continent torn oppressed the sea,

  When the ancient heavens did in rains depart,

  While the high-danced whirls

  Of the tossed scud made hiss thy drenched brood …

  He was still reading when Mrs. Galli returned two-hours later and remarked that if she had known he was going to read aloud she would not have gone to the movies. “It sounds just like music,” she announced, and Katie smiled happily.

  22

&nb
sp; IT WAS NOT MUCH later that evening that Sergeant Goldsmith was reading the same poem from the collection of Francis Thompson that he had taken from Dolly Gebhardt’s apartment. He reread and marked a passage where the page bore the marks of much reading:

  And so of all which form inheriteth

  The fall doth pass the rise in worth;

  For birth hath in itself the germ of death,

  But death hath in itself the germ of birth.

  It is the falling acorn buds the tree,

  The falling rain that bears the greenery,

  The fern-plants moulder when the ferns arise.

  For there is nothing lives but something dies,

  And there is nothing dies but something lives.

  Till skies by fugitives,

  Till Time, the hidden root of change, updries,

  Are Birth and Death inseparable on earth;

  For they are twain yet one, and Death is Birth.

  Goldsmith laid the book aside and looked at his watch. Liza Tracy would be starting her midnight stint in a few minutes. He went into the kitchen and poured himself a cup of cold coffee. The place was already a mess although his wife had left only that morning for two weeks in the country. He was glad that the invitation had come when it had, he was home so little now. But he was also glad to get out of the empty house a few minutes later.

  He timed himself to be in the club as Liza went off, but not where she would see him. He scanned the patrons at the bar and spotted one instantly he would have taken bets was Dave Albright. The man was sweating profusely—the sweat of an alcoholic in any temperature. His hand trembled as he reached for his glass and emptied it. He slouched off the bar stool and started for the dressing rooms. Goldsmith intercepted him.

  “Albright?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You handle Miss Tracy?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’ve got a proposition for you.”

  Albright pulled himself together with visible effort. “Liza? Nice little routine she’s got. That girl’s coming. In a big way.” He listed a little toward Goldsmith. “Did you see Weston’s column yesterday? Something, huh?”

  “Maybe. Got a few minutes?”

  “I got to look in on Liza. Can you wait a couple of minutes?”

  “I’ll meet you at the Shamrock across the street.”

  He watched the agent’s attempt at briskness down the passageway. He turned to find the m.c. beside him, smiling. “Hard guy to find, isn’t he?”

  “Maybe I don’t look in the right places,” Goldsmith said, starting to go.

  “Why don’t you book her out of here? We got prestige. Make a deal: we’ll give her another week here to build …”

  Goldsmith interrupted. “Build her another week. Then we’ll talk.” He broke away from the man, knowing the next question would be on his connections, his house. A deal, he thought, make a deal, everybody was making a deal, looking for another ten per cent from Liza’s measly take.

  Albright arrived at the Shamrock five minutes later, at best fifteen dollars richer. Goldsmith waved him back to where he was sitting, and showed him his identification.

  “Homicide,” the agent said. His wizened face turned a shade paler. “I thought …”

  “I know what you thought,” the detective said. “You’ve just got a one-track mind. Where did you find her, Albright?”

  “Mahoney’s Place. Eighth Avenue.”

  “You just happened by there, caught her act. The greatest little singer you ever heard. Just right for going places …”

  “That’s right.”

  “When did you sign her in here?”

  “Six weeks ago.”

  “Why? She’s gone as far as she’s going and she knows it. So do you. Why did you bring her down here?”

  “I needed dough. So did she. That’s why.”

  “Maybe that’s her reason. But it’s not yours. You were doing somebody a favor, Albright, a big favor, somebody who had a great big heart and a friend going downhill. She liked doing things anonymously, and she knew a lot of anonymous people. You’re one of them. Why you’d want to do her a favor—that’s none of my business. Her murder is.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “No? A ten per cent cut from Liza’s legitimate. Maybe you get twenty. But the commission comes a lot higher in her friend’s business. And it’s smart to keep the talent happy, high-class talent like that. That’s reason enough for a big favor.”

  “You shouldn’t have any trouble proving that, Sergeant.”

  Goldsmith smiled. His voice softened. “I don’t want to prove it. It’s out of my line. Let the vice boys worry about it. I’m philosophical about the facts of life. And I know a good turn when I get one. I never forget it. Want a drink?”

  Albright studied him a moment. “Okay.”

  “Bar whisky?”

  “Anything better would choke me.”

  The detective called out the order to the bartender. When they were set up he got the drinks himself and brought them to the table. He watched the trembling of Albright’s hand as he lit a cigarette.

  “The way I see it,” Goldsmith said easily, “Liza’s friend, Dolly, didn’t understand the variety of agents there can be—theater, literary, vaudeville—she didn’t understand the distinction. To her, an agent knew the right people for any talent. Did she ever ask you to see what you could do for a poet?”

  Albright sipped his drink. Each taste seemed to have a distinct flavor of its own. “I don’t think I’ve got the right act for you, Sergeant.”

  Goldsmith lit a cigarette. Albright was not going to commit himself if he thought his information didn’t weigh enough to guarantee the detective’s silence on his pimping.

  “Let me look at it. Even if I can’t use it, I’ll buy.”

  “Okay, if that’s the way you want it. But I’m warning you, Sergeant, I don’t look much maybe, but I got a lot of friends.”

  “I didn’t threaten you, Albright. Let’s not put it on such a low level.” His words had an easy flow that belied his anger.

  Albright shrugged. “It’s over five years ago. She started working on me, working hard. She wanted me to read his stuff. What the hell would I know if I did read it? I didn’t want any part of it. ‘Meet him,’ she says. ‘Introduce him to somebody. You’re always introducing me to somebody.’ There was an answer to that one and I gave it to her. I never met the guy. I never read his stuff. I can’t even tell you his name. Now do you see the pig in a poke you bought, Sergeant?”

  “I’ve bought skinnier ones. Where was Dolly living then?”

  “Right where she was last week.”

  “Where did she live before that?”

  Albright shrugged. “I picked her up on Eighth Avenue.”

  “You do all right on Eighth Avenue.”

  “Gold dust and fool’s gold, sometimes you find them side by side.”

  “Yeah,” the detective said. “All you got to do is keep digging in the dirt.”

  The little man threw down the rest of his drink, curling in the last traces from his lips with his tongue. He grinned and looked for all the world like a bulldog trying to be coy. “Funny, you should say that, Sergeant.”

  “Why?”

  “When she was trying to sell me on him—‘He’s a country kid,’ she says. ‘The city’s killing him. He needs a break, Dave.’ ‘Look, baby,’ I said, ‘the best break you could give him is to send him back to the farm.’ It turned out he didn’t want to go. He was scared.”

  “Scared of what?”

  Albright shrugged. “Maybe bulls,” he giggled, “like the rest of us.”

  Goldsmith studied his cigarette. He detested that slang reference to police more than any other. “The stuff she wanted you to read,” he said coldly, “had any of it been printed?”

  Albright rubbed his chin. “Yeah. Wait a minute. Wait a minute now. She had a handful of the stuff. All I saw was writing, but she took a page out o
f it. ‘Look at this one,’ she said. ‘It’s even printed. Like in a magazine. It’s called Mother.’ ‘That’s all, baby,’ I said. ‘You keep him. I’ve never been a mother myself. I wouldn’t appreciate it.’“

  23

  “YOU GAVE ME AN awful start, Father, a terrible start seeing a priest.”

  “I’m awfully sorry. I should have called you before coming.”

  “I was afraid something happened to my husband. Will you come in or sit here on the porch, Father?”

  Father Duffy motioned to the porch chairs. A cat hopped from one of them and stretched. “Your husband is ill, Mrs. Grosvenor?”

  “Not a day in his life. I wouldn’t sit there if I was you, Father. The cat’s shedding now and his hair’s all over everything. It’s the construction he works on is dangerous. Mr. Grosvenor’s a carpenter. He’s English, you know. A convert. He turned when he married me. A nicer man you never met for an Englishman.”

  Father Duffy smiled. “You met him in this country?”

  “I did not. I met him in Dublin. He likes to say he had the pick of all the roses in Ireland and picked me hisself. We’ve no children, you see, and it makes us closer than some. I was the oldest of six girls, and glad I was to be picked. Some isn’t picked yet and the youngest would have been better off not.”

  “As a matter of fact, Mrs. Grosvenor, it’s one of your sisters I came to inquire about—Mary Brandon.”

  The woman did not speak for a moment. Her small blue eyes searched his face. “That’s a queer thing for you to be asking me, Father,” she said then.

  She spoke as though by mere virtue of his being a priest he should know about her sister. Either that, or Mary Brandon had been so much in the news, she was common knowledge, he thought. In view of the event that had brought him halfway across the country to talk with this volatile, middle-aged woman, he suspected the latter reason. And yet there was no chagrin in her response. She was sitting, mild and comfortable, waiting for him to explain.

  “Mrs. Grosvenor,” he said, “I’ll be frank with you. I’m trying to trace your sister. I can’t tell you why. But I’ve come here from Marion City, Pennsylvania. When she left there over fifteen years ago, it was your address she gave to the parish housekeeper.”