“What about Arthur, the butler?” asked Mr. Clemens. “He could have left us and found someplace with a telephone—there’s bound to be one near our pension. He could have called Dupree and told him every word we’d said within five minutes of leaving us.”
“He could have,” I said. “But he didn’t know we were going to go see the place tonight. We didn’t even know it until after Arthur had left. So Dupree wouldn’t have known there was any urgency about cleaning it out today. Only LeJeune actually knew we were going there tonight.”
Mr. Clemens swirled the ice cubes in his glass, scowling. “Yes, that does make it look as if it had to be LeJeune. I reckon George Cable will be disappointed to learn that his old friend has betrayed us. Remember, he told us LeJeune was among the last honest cops in New Orleans? I think we’ve just reduced the total by one more. And that may mean that the whole damned police department has just declared its principles: Protect the wealthy white man, even if you have to hang an innocent colored man to do it. Hell, from the way Reynold Holt talked, they seem to think that hanging the colored man is more important than protecting the white folks. I’m starting to think it’s well past time we shook the dust of this rotten city off our feet.”
“I can’t disagree,” I said. “It’s too bad; the place does undeniably have its attractive side. But here comes Mr. Cable; we’ll have to break the news to him before LeJeune arrives.”
Mr. Cable was all smiles as he sat down with us, but his manner changed when Mr. Clemens outlined our recent discoveries. He was shocked to learn that LeJeune had apparently betrayed us. “I thought I knew Richard better than that,” he said, shaking his head. “There must be some other explanation for it all.”
“I’d like to think so myself,” said Mr. Clemens. “I thought I was a good judge of character, and it looks as if I’ve missed the target twice. Well, maybe I’m not as surprised by LeJeune as by Maria Staunton. A policeman spends his whole working life dealing with crime and corruption, and some of it’s bound to get under his skin. But that little woman—I have a hard time imagining her killing even a fly, let alone two men. But even a mouse will bite if it’s backed into a corner.”
“Samuel, this is the first time I’ve ever heard you admit to a deficiency of imagination,” said Mr. Cable. The little man smiled ruefully. “Not that I had any more suspicion of her than you did. Why, I spent the best part of an hour with Mrs. Staunton this afternoon, and if she is the murderer, she did the best job of acting I’ve seen short of Sarah Bernhardt. She seems truly heartbroken over losing her Percy, as she called him. I do believe she loved her husband.”
Mr. Clemens cupped his chin, frowning. “I’d believe she’s a murderer sooner than that she’s a good enough actor to fool us, George. I’ve seen some pretty good liars in my time, from card sharks and jackleg preachers right up to railway tycoons and newspaper editors, and that’s not even counting senators or governors. There aren’t many who can fool me anymore. I wouldn’t have thought the lady was in that class.”
“It is hard to believe,” said Mr. Cable. “But I still hope you’re wrong about LeJeune, at least. I’ve known Richard for a lot of years, and he’s always been as straight with me as any policeman could ever be with a newspaperman. After all, Dupree’s being at the apartment this afternoon could be a coincidence.”
“I would like to think so, too,” I said. “Then at least there’s a chance of some kind of justice for the killer, and for Leonard Galloway.”
“Yes, we mustn’t forget Leonard,” said Mr. Cable. “He’s the one I’m most concerned about. Even if the murderer goes unpunished, I can’t let myself give up as long as there’s a chance of that innocent man being punished for it.”
Mr. Clemens ran a hand over his brow, pushing back his long hair. Anger and frustration were evident on his face, and for a moment, I was not certain which was uppermost. Then he slapped his palm on the table. “You’re right, fellows. I can’t let myself get discouraged while there’s still a chance we can save Leonard. If I do, the bigots and their hired hands will win the day. Maybe it’s an uphill race, but if I give up now, I might as well have never started it.”
Mr. Cable smiled again. As small as he was, it made him look like a little boy, despite his full beard. “That’s the right spirit, Samuel. Let’s give Richard a chance to show us his true colors. If he’s the man I think he is, we may be able to save Leonard yet.”
“Well, we’ll find out soon enough which side of the fence our detective is on,” said Mr. Clemens. “Here he comes.”
I turned just in time to see Detective LeJeune enter the café. He took off his hat and mopped his brow with a white handkerchief, then looked around and spotted us. “George! Glad you could make it,” he said, coming over to our table. “Mr. Clemens, Mr. Cabot. Good evening to you all. I’m looking forward to our little scouting trip tonight.” He pulled the fourth chair out from the table and sat down.
“Let’s hope there’s still a horse in the barn when we get there,” said Mr. Clemens, in a dry tone of voice. “It seems there’s someone else with a key to the apartment.”
The detective frowned. “Well, of course there is . . . Wait a minute. What have you found out?”
Mr. Clemens leaned back in his chair and gestured to me. “We went ahead and took a look around on our own. Why don’t you tell him what you found out, Cabot?”
I quickly summarized my afternoon’s expedition, ending with Dupree’s delivery of the suitcase to Maria Staunton’s home, and our suspicions that she might have been the one who used the apartment. The detective listened attentively, once or twice stopping me to ask about some detail of what I’d seen. When I had finished, he nodded and said, “Good work, son. I reckon you just saved me from missing the boat entirely. I knew Gordon Dupree was a slick article, but I didn’t think he was the kind to impede an investigation by removing evidence. He’ll be sorry he did it, if I have any say about it.”
Mr. Clemens didn’t change his expression. “That’s easy to say, Detective,” he drawled. “But Dupree must have known we were going to search that apartment tonight, for him to clean it out this afternoon. He’s had weeks since Robinson’s murder to go in and get whatever he was after. Who besides you knew we were going to go there tonight?”
“You, for one,” said the detective, returning Mr. Clemens’s stare. “You and your secretary and Mr. Cable. Let’s not throw around accusations, Mr. Clemens. That’s an easy game to play, but I doubt it’ll get us anywhere. My job is to put the murderer behind bars, and I’d be mighty damned ungrateful if I didn’t appreciate what you and Mr. Cabot have found out today. But let’s get the lid nailed on this thing so we can stop suspecting each other. I can wait for supper if you gentlemen can. Do you want to go over right now and look at that place without any more delay?”
“What’s the point of it?” said Mr. Cable. “Dupree has probably taken away everything of any potential value as evidence.”
“He may think he has,” said Detective LeJeune. “But unless he had a platoon of cleaning maids in there with him, odds are he’s left something behind without even knowing it. And I’ve spent twenty years learning how to search a crime scene for just that kind of overlooked detail. Shall we go see what we can learn from it?”
Mr. Clemens stood up. “Hell, yes. I reckon we’re close enough to the end of the trail that I can wait a little longer to put food in my belly. Let’s go see this apartment and find out whether we can discover something that’ll free the cook and put the real murderer in jail in his place.”
26
Detective LeJeune led us up a flight of stairs into a hallway with a dark red carpet and flowered wallpaper in the taste of two decades ago. It was lit by a large window facing on the street, through which I could see the balcony on the front of the building. There were two doors on either side of the hallway, and he led us to the one on the left.
“Out of curiosity, how’d you get a key?” asked Mr. Clemens. “It looks as if I may be de
eper into the detective business than I’d ever expected, and a professional secret or two might come in handy somewhere down the road.”
LeJeune chuckled. “I’ll tell you, but I doubt you’ll get much use out of it. The landlord runs a betting parlor over on Burgundy Street. We’ve known about it for years, but never had any complaints, so we’ve left him alone. This afternoon, I reminded him that he’s technically in violation of several ordinances, and he was happy to cooperate.”
He turned the key in the lock; at first it seemed to resist, but then he got it seated right and pushed the door open. The four of us stepped inside. LeJeune lit the gas to reveal a tastefully furnished room with two lace-curtained floor-to-ceiling windows opening onto the balcony. There was a bright coverlet on the bed and a painting of a vase with spring flowers on the wall above the little table. The whole room gave the impression of a better style of living than the exterior of the building in which it was located would have suggested.
“Looks as if Robinson took pretty good care of his mistress, if that’s who lived here,” said LeJeune. “The landlord told me he’d been renting it for about five years. We’ll get the specific date if it turns out to be important.”
“Remember, Robinson’s butler told us he never came here,” I said. “And he claimed that Robinson wasn’t a womanizer.”
“We don’t have to take all that at face value,” said Mr. Clemens. He went over to the window and peeked through the curtain onto the street, then turned around to face us. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Arthur was lying to protect his master. The decor certainly shows a woman’s touch, and the place is clean. Maybe Dupree had that platoon of cleaning maids, after all. Did the landlord know who was living here?”
“No,” said the detective. “He’s an absentee, almost never comes by the place. But he told the concierge to answer my questions, so we should be able to find out more, once I run the fellow down. We’ll see if the neighbors have noticed anything, as well. Meanwhile, let’s look around and see what we can find. Dupree might have cleaned it out, but we may still be able to tell who was using it and what for.”
At first glance, I thought LeJeune was being far too optimistic. There was a minimum of furniture: a small table, two straight-backed chairs, a chest of drawers, and a single bed. They were all of good quality, but I could see no personal effects that might identify the owner. Mr. Clemens walked over to the chest of drawers and opened the top drawer. “Empty,” he said. The other drawers also proved to be empty.
“It looks as if we’re shooting blanks,” said Mr. Clemens. “I wonder how that damned lawyer knew to clean the place out just before we were coming to look here.”
“It could just be coincidence that he came today,” said the detective. “What I’d really like to know about is what Dupree took out of here and why he delivered it to Maria Staunton, if that’s where it ended up. It smells funny to me; why would Robinson be renting an apartment for his sister-in-law’s use?”
“Well, we don’t know for certain that Robinson was renting the place for Maria,” said Mr. Clemens. “If she’d been staying here, I’d have expected a couple of bookshelves, at the very least. Dupree could have been taking that suitcase to somebody else at her house. Her brother or her sister might have been visiting. He could even have brought it to one of the servants, I suppose.”
“Yes, or he might have simply paid a visit to Mrs. Staunton, then taken the suitcase elsewhere,” said Cable. “I don’t blame your secretary for not staying to watch where Dupree went afterward—there’d have been too much danger of being seen. But I wish we knew for certain what was in that suitcase and who got it. It must have been something that has to be kept quiet, if they sent the lawyer to get it, instead of one of the servants.”
“Good point,” said Mr. LeJeune. “Nobody uses a high-priced lawyer as an errand boy unless . . . Shh! What’s that?” We all fell dead silent, listening. There were light footsteps climbing the stairs toward the second floor. “Quick! Out on the balcony. I’ll douse the light,” said the detective. We quickly opened the French windows and tried to make ourselves inconspicuous; the light went out behind us and LeJeune stepped out to join us, pulling the window shut behind him.
“This might have nothing to do with us, but I’d just as soon not be caught here,” whispered the detective. “Be still, now.”
I was uncomfortably aware of being on an open balcony, directly across from the saloon where I had spent much of the afternoon. The daylight was fading, but any curious eyes glancing upward would still have little trouble picking out the four of us, no matter how inconspicuous we tried to appear. Nor was there any guarantee that, if the person climbing the stairs entered the apartment we had just left, he or she would not come directly to the front and throw open the balcony windows to discover four trespassers. And then? My imagination summoned up dire consequences: arrest, gunfire, being thrown off the balcony to the street below . . .
But I had little time to consider these possibilities, as the door to the apartment opened and someone entered. I shrank back against the balcony railing, but the newcomer strode confidently across the apartment to the windows and opened the nearest one. “Gentlemen, I know the evening breeze is fine, but it would be more private if you would step inside for a few minutes. We have things to talk about.”
It was Eulalie Echo. After a moment of stunned silence, Mr. Clemens laughed and said, “Eulalie, I’m glad I don’t have a weak heart, or you’d have come close to stopping it. How in the world did you know we were here?” He stepped into the apartment through the open window, and we followed him.
“You are not the only one who has been watching this apartment, Mr. Clemens,” said the voodoo woman. She relit the gas, then took a seat at the table. “But you cannot expect me to give away all my secrets, especially to a policeman. Good evening, Mr. LeJeune. I know you by reputation, but I don’t believe we have met.”
LeJeune smiled and gave a little bow. “I hope my reputation speaks well of me.”
Mr. Clemens pulled out the other chair at the little table and took his seat opposite Eulalie Echo. “Well, it looks as if we got here too late to find anything useful,” he said. “If you’ve been watching, you must know that Dupree cleaned the place out this afternoon.”
“He’s done a pretty good job of it,” said LeJeune. “Once we’re done talking, though, I’m going over the apartment with a fine-tooth comb, and I guarantee you I’ll turn up something we can eventually use. But I reckon you wouldn’t be here unless you know something we don’t know, Eulalie. What’s your news?”
“Wait one more minute,” said the voodoo woman. “I decided to come meet you here because a group of white men visiting a woman in a colored section of town is bound to attract notice sooner or later; and I don’t need that kind of notice, even if nobody guesses the correct reason for your visit. I have also asked Buddy Bolden to join us; he has news for us, and I believe I hear him on the stairs right now.”
Sure enough, footsteps came up the stairs, and after a moment, there was a knock on the door; at Mr. Clemens’s gesture, I opened it to admit Buddy Bolden, carrying his comet case. “Evenin’, Miz ’Lalie,” he said. “I came as fast as I could.”
“Good. Let us begin,” said the voodoo woman. “First, let me tell something I have learned. I have found out more about the woman who was seen using this apartment. The last time she was here, she came in a closed carriage, and she wore a veil. She was well-disguised, but the driver was plainly visible. My informant saw the same driver again, just this morning, out in the Garden District, and this time he was driving a man into town. That man was Gordon Dupree, the lawyer.”
“Dupree, eh?” said LeJeune, nodding appreciatively. He took a notebook and pencil out of his pocket and scribbled something down. Then he looked around at the group. “If it was his driver, the woman could have been one of his clients. And the two that come to mind are Maria Staunton and Eugenia Robinson.”
“Yes,” said Mr. C
lemens. “I suppose it could be someone else, but those two would be my first guesses. But which one?”
“I don’t know,” said Eulalie, with a shrug. “The two sisters are similar in stature, and they would be hard to distinguish at a distance, especially to someone who doesn’t know them well. I can’t even be certain that it wasn’t another person entirely, possibly a servant.”
“Eulalie’s right. We can’t just assume it was one of the sisters,” said Mr. Cable. “It could have been a hired coach, in which case, the fact that Dupree was in it today tells us nothing at all.”
“True enough,” said Mr. Clemens. He leaned his elbows on the table, folding his hands beneath his chin. “Still, we can try to see if it fits a pattern. Eulalie, I’d appreciate it if you’ll see if your informant can learn where the driver works.”
“Certainly,” said the voodoo woman. “I have already asked him to try to learn that. When I know more, I’ll tell you. Now, Buddy Bolden, will you tell us your news?”
The young colored man had been leaning against the wall; now he stepped forward and said, “I talked to a fellow who used to play piano at Anderson’s café. Not quite a month ago, he was going on his break, and he saw a white man come in, asking Anderson where he could find an herb doctor. Anderson told him, and the fellow went off.”
LeJeune looked up from his notebook. “Did your friend describe this white man? Or say where to find the herb doctor?”
Bolden spread his hands. “He didn’t send him to anybody in particular, as far as my friend knew. There must be twenty herb doctors up on South Rampart Street, any day you go there. But the customer was an old fellow, not Mr. Robinson or Mr. Staunton, ’cause I asked particular about them, and my friend knew who both of them were; said he used to see ’em in there all the time. This fellow was dressed like he had money, wearing a beard, and walking with a cane. He was looking for a love potion, and my friend said he looked like he needed it.”
[Mark Twain Mysteries 02] - A Connecticut Yankee in Criminal Court Page 27
