Gallows in My Garden

by Deming, Richard

  The red started at her throat and crept upward until she was crimson to the hairline. She just stood there without saying anything.

  “I told you I wouldn’t turn you in unless you were the particular murderer I’m looking for,” I said wearily. “Outside of the Lawson family, I don’t care who you killed or what other crimes you’ve committed. But I want a straight story.”

  The tears started to flow again. “What I told you is straight, almost. I just changed it a little.”

  I gave her a sour grin. “Just the part about it being a frame, eh?”

  She gulped once, then nodded. “It happened a year before I met Don,” she said in a small voice. “The judge gave me a year suspended sentence and put me on parole. I broke parole and changed my name. My real name is Janet Whittier. Don’s father checked police records just in the hope that he’d find something on me to use as a weapon. They had my picture on file, so he had me cold. Everything happened like I said, except it was parole violation they could have sent me up for.”

  I rose and walked around the desk. “All right, Kate. I’m going to check your record at headquarters, but I won’t turn you in. One more question. Why did you tell us the other night that you hadn’t definitely decided to marry Don?”

  “Because I really hadn’t.” She frowned to herself. “I mean, I meant to marry him when I decided to come back, but after I got here—” She shrugged hopelessly. “I can’t explain it. I just decided I didn’t really love him.” Then she said candidly, “I probably would have married him though. A few million dollars can make up for not loving a guy too much.”

  As I started out the door, I turned and asked as an afterthought, “Ever happen to notice a pad of typing-paper in Don’s desk?”

  “Yes,” she said promptly. “He didn’t have a typewriter, but he always used that as letter paper.”

  “Know what happened to it?”

  “Sure. I gave it to Maggie for grocery lists.”

  I had not expected her to know, and her answer caught me off center. She probably thought I had suddenly lost my mind, for I stood staring at her with a blank look on my face for nearly a minute, then spun around and ran from the room.

  Maggie was peeling potatoes over the sink. She turned and frowned suspiciously when I burst into the kitchen.

  “Maggie—” I started to say, then stopped when I saw the pad lying on the table.

  “Kate give you this?” I asked, picking it up. A list of groceries covered about a quarter of the top page.

  “Yes, sir,” she said stiffly. “Please be careful of it. It’s my grocery list.”

  “Have you torn off any pages?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Have you torn off any pages,” I half yelled. “Since Kate gave you the pad, have you torn off any pages?”

  She shook her head, a puzzled and alarmed look beginning to form in her eyes.

  “Thanks,” I said, and started out with the pad.

  “Hey! That’s my grocery list!” Maggie shouted.

  “You’ll have to make another, Maggie,” I called back. “This is murder evidence.”

  Professor Laurence Quisby’s last class had ended and he had gone home by the time I got back to the state teachers’ college. It was four p.m. before I finally tracked him down at home and delivered the pad.

  “The pencil writing may obscure part of the message,” he said. “But I’ll do what I can. Phone me later in the evening, if you wish.”

  I told him I so wished.

  XXI

  TUESDAY IS SUPPOSED TO BE Warren Day’s afternoon off, But he was just leaving the office when I arrived at four-thirty. When he saw me, he wearily removed his hat, dropped it on a hook of the clothes tree next to the door, and returned to his desk.

  “I been off duty four hours,” he remarked sourly. “Next lifetime I’m going to be a private dick and take three two-month vacations every year. Where the devil’s that note?”

  Assuming he meant Don Lawson’s suicide note, I tossed it across to him. He replaced it in the case file folder in his desk drawer, left the drawer open, and gazed down into it contemplatively. Finally he groped toward the back and brought out a whisky bottle three-fourths full.

  “I never do this on duty,” he said, tipping the bottle and swallowing twice.

  As he started to replace it without passing out any invitations, I remarked, “Those were the years.”

  “What were the years?” he asked.

  This spiked my intended pun. He was supposed to ask, “What years?” after which I would snap back, “Thanks. I’ll take bourbon.”

  “Never mind,” I said. “Get that bottle out and stop being such a tightwad. Anyone would think you bought it yourself.”

  Since he didn’t correct me, my guess was probably right. There must be tighter men than Warren Day, but so far I haven’t encountered them. You can generally bank on it that any liquor he has around has been a gift, for he likes to employ his money on more important things than luxuries, such as accumulating interest. Not too ungraciously he reproduced the bottle.

  “It’s a little raw,” he said. “Better make it a small one.”

  I told him I was willing to take a chance and matched his double swallow.

  He nearly snatched the bottle from my hand when I lowered it. And when he replaced it, he locked the drawer and dropped the key in his pocket.

  “All right, now,” he said. “Give with what you found out today, if anything.”

  “First tell me if anyone recognized those pictures of Don and Tate.”

  He nodded. “We hit the jackpot on every try. Don Lawson got off a bus at his gate at two-twenty a.m., and Tate was miles away on another bus at that time. So both Doctor Lawson and Tate are in the clear.”

  I gave him a brief resumé of my activities since he had given me the introductory note that morning, mentioning first that there was nothing new insofar as the autopsy was concerned. When I got to the point about the suicide note being cut off with a pair of scissors, and Professor Quisby’s attempt to reincarnate the original text, he pricked up his ears.

  “Maybe we finally got a break,” he said. “When will he know?”

  “He told me to call him this evening. Did you ever get a copy of the Lawson will?”

  “Yeah,” Day said glumly. He fished a dead cigar butt from his desk ash tray, blew the ashes from it, stuck it in his mouth, and actually lit it. “Our legal expert went over it, but there’s nothing there Mannering hadn’t told us about.”

  I asked, “Did your college-boy cop dig up anything on our suspects’ financial statuses yet?”

  The inspector rummaged through the rat’s nest he called an “in box,” found a blue memo slip, and adjusted his glasses to read it.

  “The servants first,” he said. “Margaret Sullivan has a twenty-five-hundred-dollar savings account at Merchants’ Trust, and about six months ago purchased nine thousand dollars in savings bonds.” He paused and looked at me expectantly.

  “Margaret Sullivan,” I said. “That’s Maggie, the housekeeper, isn’t it?”

  Day nodded.

  “She was left ten thousand by the will,” I reminded him. “Subtract a thousand for taxes, a new house dress, and a bottle of wine to celebrate the inheritance, and it’s all accounted for.”

  The inspector nodded again. “About how I figured. Jason Henry, the gardener, has a fifteen-hundred-dollar savings account in the same bank. Also a safety-deposit box.”

  I raised one eyebrow. “Which might contain his birth certificate,” I suggested, “or might hold the Aga Khan’s stolen jewels.”

  He blew a thin stream of smoke, coughed, examined the lighted end of his cigar with astonishment and punched it out in the tray. “Right. But we can’t peek in without a court order. On Kate Malone, the maid, Karl Thomas, the kid who discovered the body, and Edmund, the houseboy, we drew a blank. No record of savings in any bank in town, and no transactions through investment houses. Edmund has a ‘prompt payment’ ratin
g with the credit bureau, but the other two aren’t known. That winds up the servants.”

  “Nothing much there,” I said. “How about the others?”

  “With a couple of exceptions, the record reads like Dunn and Bradstreet. Gerald Cushing has about a hundred grand in liquid assets, and seems to be worth over a million altogether. That’s only a guess by Mr. Harvey at the clearing house, because Cushing’s holdings and investments are so complicated it would take a CPA a month to figure him out.

  “Jonathan Mannering is worth about a quarter million, mostly in savings and gilt-edged securities. Seems he has the reputation of being a very cautious investor.”

  I said, “Ann implied he was a little conservative.”

  “Ann?” the inspector asked, frowning.

  “Mrs. Lawson.”

  He glared at me, then went on. “Doctor Douglas Lawson has a savings account at Riverside National of twenty thousand dollars, and a checking account of a few hundred at the same bank. Seems to have no other assets. That ends the rich kids and takes us to the average people.”

  I elevated my eyebrows. “How about Grace? Isn’t she classed as a rich kid?”

  Day frowned at the paper. “I guess in a way. But she’s underage and everything seems to be handled through the estate. All I got under her name is the statement, ‘No records.’ “

  “All right,” I said. “Get on to the average kids.”

  “Abigail Stoltz has thirty-five hundred in savings, a five-hundred-dollar checking account and a collection of paintings that’s supposed to be worth over twenty thousand. Last year her deposits in her checking account came to about forty-five hundred, which probably indicates her income from her own art work.

  “All Arnold Tate has is a checking account of seven hundred and fifty dollars. A year ago it was fifteen hundred and there have been no deposits since.” He raised his head to look at me. “The guy went to school and lived a whole year on seven hundred and fifty bucks.”

  “Abe Lincoln did it on less,” I told him.

  “Last of all is Mrs. Lawson.” He glared at me again when he emphasized the Mrs. “She used to have a few stocks a while back, but got rid of them. Now she has a savings account of two thousand dollars at Riverside National and a checking account at the same bank with about eleven hundred in it.”

  He laid down the memo and I said, “Yes?”

  “Yes what?”

  “Get on with it.”

  He peered over his glasses at me puzzledly. “That’s the works. Everything.”

  I sat up straight. “You mean Ann Lawson’s total assets are only thirty-one hundred dollars?”

  The inspector seemed surprised at my surprise. “Sure. So what?”

  “If you remember the will,” I said, “Mrs. Lawson was left income from a half-million-dollar trust fund.” I did some mental computing. “Even at three percent interest, the income would be fifteen thousand a year, and if Mannering hasn’t been able to find at least three percent on a half-million-dollar investment, I wouldn’t want him investing my money.”

  Day still looked puzzled. “Well?” he inquired.

  “There was another interesting little item in the will.” I started ticking off on my fingers. “The house, maintenance, servants’ salaries, all were taken care of by another trust fund. Mrs. Lawson doesn’t have any living expenses. So why does she have only thirty-one hundred dollars?”

  Day scratched the fuzz over one ear. “I’ll bite. Why does she?”

  I leaned back in my chair again. “I’ve got a fair idea, but I want to sit on it awhile. Did your college boy get around to checking on the Lawson ex-chauffeur?”

  “Vance Logan? Yeah. But it doesn’t make sense.”

  He pushed the papers in his in box around some more until he found another blue memo slip.

  “Logan had a checking account of two thousand dollars at First National. He opened it with ten thousand six months ago, ran it down to an overdraft before the end of the month, deposited five thousand more, ran through that, and has been making regular monthly deposits up to ten thousand ever since. Total deposits, including the first, came to seventy thousand dollars. First National has one of those check photostat machines that records every check clearing their bank. Most of his were cashed at North Shore Club and other gambling-dives. Seems the roulette tables got most of it.”

  I asked, “Why do you say it doesn’t make sense?”

  Day stared at me. “Does it make sense to you for an ex-chauffeur suddenly to start living like a millionaire?”

  I nodded. “It’s the first thing in this case that does make sense. Usually you’re quicker on the uptake. Logan was blackmailing someone.”

  The inspector slowly straightened in his chair. “Either I’m getting old, or this case has me going in circles,” he said disgustedly. “A rookie could see that, but I have to have it explained by a punch-drunk ex-stevedore.”

  “And you can bet your pivot tooth that’s what got him killed,” I went on, ignoring the unnecessary insult. “I’m beginning to get a glimmer of light. What were the stocks you mentioned Mrs. Lawson disposed of?”

  Warren Day looked at me strangely. “What you getting at?”

  “A brand new theory. What were the stocks?”

  Slowly he fished the original memo back out of the in box and studied it. “About a year ago—I haven’t got the exact date—she invested a hundred thousand dollars in Marsh Chemicals. The stock immediately rose and she sold a week later at a ten-percent profit. There’s no record of any other market transactions either before or since.”

  “So she closed out with a hundred and ten thousand?” I asked softly. “Where is it?”

  “Damn you, Moon!” the inspector said.

  I looked at him in surprise and saw his nose was faintly white.

  “Don’t blame me for your own evil thoughts,” I said. “It’s not my fault your criminal-investigator mind puts two and two together and makes your ladylove look like a four.”

  “She’s not my ladylove!” Day yelled.

  “I know it, Inspector,” I said soothingly. “You’re immune to love. In fact I can think of three reasons you’re immune.”

  “Yeah?” he said suspiciously.

  “Yeah,” I repeated. “You’re too sensible, too level-headed—“

  “And?” he inquired when I paused. “Too old.”

  “You should be in vaudeville,” he said sourly. “You slay me.”

  “If it will make you feel better,” I said, “there’s one part of the puzzle I can’t fit to Ann Lawson.”

  “You don’t have to make me feel better!” he yelled at me. “Mrs. Lawson’s nothing to me but another suspect!”

  “I believe you,” I said placatingly. “But here’s how things stack up.” One by one I checked off items on my fingers. “One. She has the best motive of all eleven suspects. Two. Just offhand it looks like Logan’s blackmail money came from her—if it was blackmail. Maybe it was just Logan’s pay for bumping the old man off. That’s a possibility, but the best bet is the car was sabotaged in the same way Grace’s convertible was, and Logan somehow found out who did it. Three. She hasn’t an alibi either for the time of Don’s death, or for any of the attacks on Grace.”

  I stopped to examine the inspector’s attentive but glum face. “The part of the puzzle I can’t fit to Ann,” I said, “is the two gunmen. It’s the thing that’s puzzled me most about the case from the beginning. How did she contact them?”

  Warren Day merely peered over his glasses at me, waiting.

  “How would any of the people in this case contact them, for that matter?” I went on. “They’re all reputable people, at least on the surface. The average person would have no more idea of how to go about meeting a couple of underworld killers than I would have about getting an introduction to Josef Stalin.”

  “That’s a minor point we can clear up when we take Garrity and Harry the Horse,” the inspector said. His expression disapproved of me heartily, but
his tone was one of begrudging agreement. “I’m afraid your reasoning points in the right direction—” He paused, flushed faintly, and corrected himself. “I mean, I think your reasoning points in the right direction. But we haven’t a nickel’s worth of proof. We can’t very well pull in anyone as influential as Mrs. Lawson and sweat out a confession on the basis of a theory. We’d have a hundred lawyers on our backs in a minute.”

  I nodded agreement. “Unless the suicide note Quisby’s working on tells us something, you’ve only got one chance. Take Garrity and Sommerfield alive and beat the name of their employer out of them. Incidentally, you got a file on a parole violator named Janet Whittier?”

  “Who’s she? How’s she fit in?”

  I told him I didn’t know whether she fitted in at all, but if she did I’d tell him about it after we looked up the record. After giving me a halfhearted argument, he took me back to the record room and we looked up the file.

  The picture accompanying the record was that of a seventeen-year-old kid with bleached hair, and Warren Day stared at it without a sign of recognition. I would not have recognized it myself if I had not known whom I was looking for.

  Kate Malone had almost told the truth with her last story. She had omitted only one item and changed one other. The part she left out was that she had served eight months of a two-year term in the girls’ corrective home before being paroled. The part she changed was that her offense had not been shoplifting, but acting as lookout for a pair of bank robbers—one of whom was her paramour.

  I looked up at Day’s puzzled face.

  “I told this kid I wouldn’t turn her in if she told me a straight story,” I said. “But her story was a little bent. Better pick up Kate Malone.”

  “The Lawson maid?” Day asked. “Why?”

  “Because she’s the link we were talking about. The link with the underworld.” I tossed the picture to him. “Take a closer look at Janet Whittier’s picture.”

  XXII

  IN SPITE OF IT BEING more than four hours after the time he was supposed to go off duty, there was no holding the inspector now that he scented a solution. Going into the outer office, he snapped a dozen orders at Desk Sergeant Danny Blake, all of which boiled down to two things-have Kate Malone brought in for questioning, and locate Lieutenant Hannegan, who was also off duty, and have him report in at once.