He hung up. Clay dialled Standish’s private number. The receiver was lifted after the second ring. ‘Mr Almond——’ he began.
‘Peterkins,’ Standish said. ‘Go talk to her.’
The line went dead, but Clay remained motionless on the bed, phone in hand, thinking. If there was anything he wasn’t going to do, it was talk to Laura Peterkins. Yet if he didn’t, Standish would wonder why. Maybe he could pretend he had lost his voice; write notes to her. Sure. Maybe he could wear a mask in the apartment elevator, too. Just little things that wouldn’t arouse suspicion.
Two strange detectives came into the bedroom—middle-aged men in rumpled blue suits. One carried a black case. He put it on the bed beside Clay. ‘Who said you could use the phone?’ he asked.
‘I’m from the Globe.’
‘Get lost,’ the detective said, opening the case.
As Clay stepped into the hallway, he heard Kitty Kelly’s voice in the living-room. ‘What did you do after he hit you, Clarissa?’ ‘Jest lay there,’ a voice replied. ‘Would you show us?’ Kitty Kelly asked. ‘Go ahead,’ Lieutenant Diffendorf’s voice said. ‘Like to see myself.’
The door to the hall closet was open and Clay slid through it, his heart pounding. He might have guessed they’d bring the maid up! He pawed the coats lining one end of the closet, pretending to search them as footsteps passed outside. It sounded as though at least a dozen people were going by. His throat tickled, but he managed not to cough. Finally there was silence, and he moved back to the door. He felt something under his foot, saw he had crushed a half-smoked cigarette. He stepped out of the closet, came face to face with the coloured maid.
Her scream echoed crazily along the hallway and he recoiled violently, bumping head and shoulder against the partially open door. She backed away, too, her eyes like poached eggs on a piece of rye toast. She screamed again.
Diffendorf ran from the bedroom, followed by Kitty Kelly, Roddy, Sergeant Storm and one of the strange detectives. ‘What the hell goes on?’ the lieutenant demanded.
‘That man!’ the maid said, pointing at Clay.
‘No!’ Clay heard himself gasp. ‘No!’
‘Come right out of the closet!’ the maid said.
Diffendorf wheeled on Clay. ‘What’s the big idea?’
He had to swallow twice before he could speak. ‘Just … just looking around, Lieutenant.’
‘Same guy used the telephone,’ the strange detective volunteered.
Everyone stared at Clay who said desperately, ‘I wasn’t the only one.’
‘Stool pigeon!’ Kitty Kelly said.
‘We all used it,’ Roddy said.
Diffendorf threw up his hands disgustedly. ‘I got a notion to lock up the whole bunch of you!’ He took a half-step, peered past Clay into the closet. ‘What’d you find?’
‘Nothing.’
Diffendorf bent, picked up the crushed cigarette. ‘What’s this?’
‘Cigarette,’ Clay said.
‘Thanks.’ The lieutenant glowered at Clay. ‘Yours?’
Clay shook his head.
Diffendorf frowned at the cigarette. ‘Parliament.’ He looked at the maid. ‘What kind did Miss Trevor smoke?’
‘Didn’t smoke none.’
Diffendorf bent, peered down at the closet floor. ‘Ha!’ he exclaimed, and picked up a second cigarette.
‘An’ I swept that out clean yesterday!’ Clarissa exclaimed.
The lieutenant handed the cigarettes to Sergeant Storm. ‘Stick ’em in an envelope and mark ’em lab. They might find something.’
‘Like what?’ Kitty Kelly asked, interested.
‘Tobacco, maybe.’ Diffendorf turned to Clarissa. ‘Now let’s go through it like we said. Wait until we’re in the bedroom, then come in and do just what you did when you found her.’
Clarissa’s pretty, milk chocolate face was frightened. ‘She still in there?’ she asked. ‘The body, I mean …’
Diffendorf said, ‘No,’ and some of the tension left the maid’s face. ‘As for you,’ Diffendorf told Clay, ‘let us play detective.’
‘I told him,’ Sergeant Storm said.
‘And I told you to get the elevator boy.’
Sergeant Storm went down the hall and out the front door. Diffendorf and the others filed into the bedroom, leaving Clay alone with the maid. ‘Dear God,’ she whispered, ‘make ’em leave me go!’ She walked slowly towards the bedroom, holding an imaginary tray on outstretched hands like a sleepwalker out of a Victorian novel.
Clay went to the front door and peered into the outer hall. The policeman was still there, but there was no sign of Storm and the elevator boy. He started through the door, then remembered his hat and paused again. He wondered if he dared steal it, and in rejecting the idea as too dangerous, remembered something the salesman had told him about the hat when he bought it. One of the features, along with a green feather which he’d removed, was an adjustable sweat band. If he couldn’t steal the hat, he realized, he could alter it so it didn’t fit, which would be better anyway. He was just bending over it, about to pick it up, when the detective in the rumpled blue suit came into the room.
‘For God’s sake!’ he said. ‘Are you at it again?’ When Clay didn’t answer, he said, ‘Either go back where the. Lieutenant can keep an eye on you, or get out.’ He picked up the hat by the crown, eyed Clay belligerently.
‘I’ll go quietly, Officer,’ Clay said.
He circled the detective and went out to the elevator. The indicator pointed to 1. ‘Storm’s got it,’ the policeman in the hall said.
‘I’ll walk,’ Clay said.
He was going through the unmarked door to the stairs when the policeman called, ‘Hey! It’s comin’ now,’ but he went on, pretending not to hear.
Chapter 6
THEY stood at the corner of Michigan Avenue and Walton Place, just far enough from the kerb not to attract cruising taxis, waiting for Amos Bundy and debating what to do. At least Tom and Camille Nichols debated, while Sam half listened, wrapped in moody forebodings. He didn’t have any faith in Amos Bundy or anybody else. It was nearly One o’clock; various investigations had been going on for almost five hours, and nobody had turned up anything anywhere. Nor did anyone seem likely to.
Just before meeting the Nicholses, he had called the Globe. Andy Talbot told him the apartment manager, questioned by Brinks in a sand trap off the eleventh fairway at Glendale, had said Miss Trevor paid her rent ($220 a month) in cash, which didn’t prove anything. The manager had also said he was shocked by the tragedy and that Miss Trevor had seemed like a nice girl. He was willing to be quoted to that effect. So were building employees, neighbours and tradesmen unearthed by other Globe reporters. They said they were shocked and that she had seemed like a nice girl. ‘Who’s kidding who?’ Andy had muttered, hanging up.
Clay had also called Roddy, who said the only thing new at the apartment was that the police had sent out for coffee and ham sandwiches; and also Gwen, whose phone didn’t answer. He was wondering if he should have called Alice when Nichols nudged his elbow.
‘You paying attention, Sam?’
‘I guess so. Why?’
Nichols was looking at the schedule Clay had drawn up of the previous night. ‘I said … maybe you can make a little more sense out of this thing now.’
‘I can try.’
It was hot on the sidewalk, and the heavy air smelled of gasoline. Two chunky men in bathing trunks, dirty towels around their necks, went by on their way to the Oak Street beach. The Sunday traffic moved slowly along the avenue.
‘Clark Street strip joints,’ Nichols prompted. ‘Then what?’
‘Just what I wrote down.’
Nichols read from the schedule. ‘“Walton Place. (Taxi?) High-class trap behind iron fence. Very swanky. Brandy and champagne at bar. Faint recollection of talking to woman. (Could this be girl?) Nice feeling about woman.”’ He eyed Clay hopefully. ‘What else?’
‘Nothing.’
&nbs
p; ‘Come now, son.’
‘Damn it!’ Clay felt sudden irritation. ‘If I remembered anything I’d tell you!’
‘Mr Bundy says he knows the place,’ Camille said.
‘Remarkable! Especially since the street’s all of three blocks long!’
‘Don’t sell Bundy short,’ Nichols said. ‘He may look like a Methodist deacon on stilts, but he’s savvy.’
‘The late Mrs Bundy,’ said a voice behind them, ‘always referred to me as “the dishonest Abe Lincoln”.’
The voice belonged to a very tall, very gaunt man. He was Mr Bundy, and Clay saw he did resemble Abraham Lincoln. There was a Civil War quality about his black broadcloth suit, his congressional shoes with insteps of elastic webbing, his black fedora and his furled umbrella, and he had shaggy eyebrows, a big nose and a wen on one cheek. He was about sixty years old.
‘Our murderer, I presume,’ he said, peering benignly down at Clay.
‘Now, wait a minute,’ Clay began, and Mr Bundy held up the umbrella placatingly. ‘Quotes around murderer.’ He reversed the umbrella, hooked Nichols’ arm with the handle, drew it towards him. ‘An ill-timed pleasantry, at best.’ He took the schedule from Nichols’ hand. ‘I believe a hat-check was mentioned …?’
Clay produced the check from his coat pocket.
‘Thank you.’ Mr Bundy took it from him. ‘And the bracelet …?’
Clay gave it to him. ‘I don’t see——’ he began.
‘I have two contacts,’ said Mr Bundy. ‘One will produce the young lady who gave you the check.’ He took off his fedora, bowed to two elderly women just turning the corner. They looked startled, but both smiled, nodded.
A comic! Clay thought disgustedly. A Shakespearean comic!
Mr Bundy replaced the fedora. ‘The other,’ he went on calmly, ‘is an expert on stolen jewellery. He will tell us what we want to know about the bracelet.’
‘And what’s that?’ Clay asked.
‘It is my theory,’ said Mr Bundy, ‘that the jewellery, among other things, was the product of blackmail.’
Clay stared at him, impressed in spite of himself. The man was either a phony, or savvy as Tom maintained, but in either case the blackmail angle was something new.
Mr Bundy elaborated, resting a lean thigh against the umbrella. The theory was not just a guess, he declared, but the result of certain preliminary investigations. There had, for instance, been a call to a colleague in Fort Worth. Quite productive. The dead girl, according to the colleague, had gone to school there, grammar school and high school, under the name of Mary Baumholtz. Ward of a spinster music teacher named Esther Baumholtz. Genteel poverty until Esther’s death in 1952 of a stroke. Then, two months later, like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon, Mr Bundy said, smiling deprecatingly, Mary Baumholtz became Mary Trevor. A Mary Trevor with mink coats, French imports, a Cadillac convertible and a luxurious apartment, but with no apparent source of income.
He paused triumphantly, apparently feeling he had scored an important point. Maybe it was important, Clay thought, but he didn’t see exactly why. Apparently Nichols felt the same way because he asked: ‘What’s the answer?’
‘Blackmail,’ said Mr Bundy. ‘As pointed out.’
Clay asked, ‘Who’d she blackmail?’
‘That we must discover.’
His colleague in Fort Worth, Mr Bundy continued, had arrived at a similar conclusion while looking into an insurance claim for the loss of an eight-thousand-dollar diamond ring bought by Miss Trevor late in ’53. For a time the colleague believed the girl was working a fake claim racket, hence the research into her background, but he abandoned this line when he discovered she had opened a checking account for fifty thousand dollars soon after Esther Baumholtz’s death. Theorizing blackmail, Mr Bundy added, since he was never able to discover where the money came from.
‘Inheritance, maybe,’ Nichols suggested.
‘The elder Miss Baumholtz,’ Mr Bundy said, ‘left her entire estate, amounting to two thousand fifty-four dollars and forty-three cents, to her cat.’
As they weighed this information, thunder rumbled in the west. A summer storm was making up over Oak Park. The thunder sounded like people moving planks in a lumber-yard.
Mr Bundy glanced at his umbrella. ‘Blackmail,’ he said again.
‘Could be,’ Clay admitted. ‘But how do we run it down?’
Mr Bundy ignored the question. ‘Did you,’ he asked, ‘make a long distance call from the Delaware Place apartment to Washington last night?’ He took a small notebook from his vest pocket, flipped it open. ‘At four thirty-one?’
‘No. At least I don’t think so.’
Mr Bundy studied the notebook. ‘The number called was Dupont 7-7689. The conversation lasted three minutes. One dollar and five cents, plus federal tax.’
‘Well, I’ll be damned!’ Clay said.
‘You don’t remember?’
‘Who was the call to?’
‘Unlisted number.’ Mr Bundy closed the notebook. ‘However, a colleague in Washington has been notified.’ He put the notebook back in his vest, frowning reflectively.
Clay reflected, too. He might have been at the apartment when the call was made, but he felt certain he hadn’t made it. He couldn’t think of anyone in Washington he’d be calling, drunk or sober. Yet it was a funny thing for the girl to do. Half past four in the morning was hardly the time for a social call. It was a mystery and he felt pleased. Something had been going on and maybe Bundy would find out what. He looked at the gaunt man hopefully.
‘I have other leads,’ the detective said. ‘I will not bother you with them now.’
‘What can we do?’ Nichols asked.
Clay said, ‘I’ve got to get back to work.’
‘A few moments more …’ Mr Bundy pleaded.
He explained what he wanted. From the dimly remembered bar behind the iron gates (which, by the way, said Mr Bundy, was the Vendome) to the dead girl’s apartment lay Mr Clay’s dark, tortuous trail. In effect, terra incognita, Mr Bundy declared. Unknown territory which Mr Clay had to re-explore.
‘That might take weeks!’ Clay protested.
No, Mr Bundy said. He did not think so. Once a few blazes, so to speak, were sighted, the way would be easy. It might even be that Mr Clay’s memory would return. If not, other people would remember for him. Mr Bundy listed them. Bartenders, waiters, hat-check girls, taxi drivers, doormen—all potential guides. And, he added, there was the woman Mr Clay had met in the Vendome. Who was she? Where had Mr Clay taken her? What light could she throw on the evening?
‘Tune in for tomorrow’s instalment,’ Camille murmured.
Clay asked, ‘Even if I can back-track, what good will it do?’
A great deal of good, Mr Bundy asserted. He needed clues. Clues, and a picture of the events leading up to the murder. They had agreed to work on the supposition someone else had done the killing, and that someone had to be found, had to be dug up out of either the girl’s past or the hitherto blank night. And who, better than Mr Clay himself, could give substance to the night?
Clay’s feeling of hope began to fade. Bundy sounded more and more like a medicine man selling Hadacol. And, besides, he doubted if he could even begin to give substance to the night. In fact, he’d almost rather it stayed blank. And anyway, there wasn’t time. He couldn’t just walk off an assignment, vanish from sight, without somebody at the Globe getting ideas. Standish, for sure, and very likely Canning, since they both needed a victim to toss to Mrs Palmer.
Suddenly the street corner conference, the three of them chatting politely with Bundy like parishioners consulting their minister about a church social, seemed insane. ‘Nuts to this!’ he said.
‘I know,’ said Mr Bundy. ‘My manner. Far too theatrical.’ He eyed Clay solemnly. ‘But even if I am a charlatan, what have you to lose?’
Clay looked at his watch. It read 12.58. The Canadian edition was already on the presses, and the Bulldog deadline wasn’t until
four.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘A half hour. Where do we start?’
Mr Bundy aimed his umbrella at a two-story brown-stone building a block down the street. ‘Vendome.’ Then, after telling them to report any discoveries by telephone to his office, he lifted his fedora, bowed to Camille and departed.
Chapter 7
THE Vendome seemed to be closed, but both the metal gate with the cast-iron V and the grey door with the painted black V were unlocked. They moved tentatively into a marble-floored hall with the gilt-edged mirrors and pink walls. To the right was the bar, the imitation zebra-skin upholstery looking dingy in sunlight that slanted from two narrow windows. Back of the bar a bald man wearing a cotton undershirt was dumping crushed ice from a sack into a storage compartment.
He didn’t look up when they came into the bar. ‘We ain’t open,’ he said. There was an eagle tattooed on his left arm.
Camille asked, ‘Could we see the bartender, please?’
The man needed a shave. ‘You’re seein’ him.’ He shook the empty sack over the container, tossed it to a corner of the bar and picked up another sack. ‘So now blow.’
In a less assured voice, Camille began, ‘Mr Clay was here last night …’
‘Yeah?’ The man straightened, glanced at Clay and yawned. ‘The big brandy-and-champagne boy.’
‘And there was a woman …’
The bartender’s eyes, bloodshot and knowing, slid up Camille’s legs and thighs to her face. ‘You his wife?’
‘No. But he’d like to find the woman.’
‘Got himself rolled, eh?’
‘It’s not that. He’d just like to find her.’
The bartender eyed Clay. ‘Can’t he talk?’
‘Sure,’ Clay said. ‘But she does it better.’
‘They all do,’ the bartender said. He up-ended the sack, let ice pour out. Apparently the conversation was over.
‘Well!’ Camille said.
Tom Nichols put a ten-dollar bill on the bar. ‘A couple of answers …?’
‘Time and a half on Sunday,’ the bartender said.
Nichols added a five-dollar bill. ‘The woman’s name …?’
Sinners and Shrouds Page 5
