Holland closed the door after her. Crombie rubbed a thick hand over his face and shook his head. “She’s having a tough time,” he said. “It’s going to take a while unless we crack this thing wide open.”
Holland said he knew that. He thanked Crombie for telling the story about his daughter and then, not knowing quite why, he said, “Do you really have a daughter?”
“No,” Crombie said. “I guess it was a pretty lousy story.”
Holland gave him a slow smile, feeling now a pleasant glow inside him. Somehow it seemed that in Crombie he had a new friend and it was a nice thing to know.
“It was a good story,” he said. “I believed it.”
Crombie grunted and flipped a switch on the interoffice communicator. “Wait a minute,” he said when Holland reached for the doorknob. “I’ll call Pilgrim. Let’s find out about that gun.”
He spoke to his secretary, closed the switch. He leaned back, regarding the walls outside his window with sleepy eyes. He neither moved nor spoke until the telephone rang. When he hung up two minutes later his ruddy face was grave.
“They fired a test bullet from that revolver,” he said. “It’s the right caliber, all right, but it’s not the gun that killed Drake.”
Holland considered the announcement glumly, aware of a sense of frustration and disappointment. “Why would anyone throw it away, then?”
“I don’t know,” Crombie said. “That’s what we have to find out. That and about four hundred other things.”
sixteen
THE APARTMENT HOUSE where Nadine Winsor lived proved to be a modest four-story affair on Eighty-First Street between Lexington and Third. The tiny vestibule was three steps down from the sidewalk level and there were five mailboxes recessed in one wall. The door stood open, courting what breeze there was, and Holland pressed the button under Nadine’s box—number three—and then tried twice more when there was no answer. Finally he went into the foyer and started up the stairs. There was but one door on the third-floor landing and he knocked here three times at five-second intervals before giving up.
At the corner drugstore he walked back where the telephone booths were and consulted a directory, looking for Winsor. He found Nadine’s name and then another listed as Charles S. When he had the address he got a cab and rode crosstown to a larger and much more imposing building on West End Avenue.
Here there was a switchboard, a carpeted foyer, a couple of upholstered benches, and several chairs precisely arranged and looking uncomfortable with their small arms and high backs. The uniformed major-domo who leaned on the switchboard talking to the operator gave Holland a quick but thorough inspection and, apparently deciding that he was of the proper social order in dress and appearance, said nothing as Holland continued directly to the elevator. The oldster who ran it stepped out of the way, and when the door shut Holland asked him what apartment Mr. Winsor had.
The man who opened the door of apartment 5-B was short, wispy-haired, and bespectacled. He was clad in slippers, sloppy summer-weight slacks, and a short-sleeved, brightly patterned sport shirt, the tail of which flopped outside the trousers.
“Yes,” he said, grudgingly it seemed.
“Mr. Winsor?”
The man nodded, eyeing Holland with some suspicion and Holland hesitated momentarily over his approach. He had already decided the part he would play, but now that he was about to step into character he wasn’t sure just how he should talk.
“I’m a private detective, Mr. Winsor,” he said, trying to keep his voice flat but not tough. “With the Crombie Agency. I wonder if I could talk to you a couple of minutes about one of our men. Name of Drake.”
“That guy?” Winsor snorted rather than spoke the words.
“You know him?”
“I tossed him out of here last week.”
“He try to put the bite on you?”
“No, but he had a proposition that smelled.” He stepped back, opening the door. “Come in,” he said. “I’ve got a couple of minutes, I guess.”
Holland followed him into an entrance foyer, down two steps into a large living-room with casement windows and a thick wall-to-wall carpet. Winsor shuffled across this on his slippered feet, heading for a grand piano in one corner. There was a tray here with a coffeepot, pitchers, and cups, and on the rack was a sheaf of music paper partly filled.
Winsor sat down on the bench, leaving Holland to find a place of his own. He played a chord or two and then went into four or five bars of some melody that was unfamiliar to Holland, repeated a certain phrase two or three times, went on to another that did not seem to fit. He tried twice more, picked up a pencil, and then tossed it back without writing anything down.
He said, “Nuts,” irritably, and swiveled on the seat of his pants. “Well, what’s your pitch?” he demanded.
“Do you read the papers?”
“Front page, sport page, and Variety.”
“This thing made the front page of the New London Day but down here you might not see it. What I mean is, this Drake got himself knocked off up in Connecticut Friday night.”
Winsor seemed unimpressed. “It don’t surprise me much.”
“The agency’s been checking some things,” Holland said, wondering how he sounded. “Things we didn’t know about. We got the idea maybe Drake made some propositions here and there on his own and we want to be sure the agency don’t get blamed. For instance, we know Drake was interested in that divorce your wife got.”
“Hah!” Winsor said contemptuously. “I’ll say he was interested.”
“It was rigged, wasn’t it? The evidence, I mean.”
“Sure.” Winsor regarded him narrowly. “Wait a minute,” he said. “What is this, a follow-up of your own? I wouldn’t do business with Drake and I won’t do it with you.” He hunched forward, a round-faced, owlish man making sure his words were understood. “Sure it was a phony. You practically got to do it in this state. The thing’ is, my wife and I agreed on the divorce and the terms, and everybody’s happy—or was until Drake got nosy.”
“Relax,” Holland said. “All I want is information. Mind telling me what the terms were?”
“Attorney’s fees, ten thousand in cash, and seven-fifty a month until she married again.”
“And what was Drake’s angle?”
“He said he could get the thing set aside so I wouldn’t have to pay any alimony. I told him to blow.”
Holland thought it over, trying to figure out just what Drake hoped to gain and deciding that the detective had come here not so much to do business with Winsor as to make sure he had the facts. With these he would be in a position to approach Nadine and threaten to expose the fraud, thereby postponing indefinitely her marriage to Arthur Baldwin.
“Nadine was a good kid,” Winsor went on. “She was secretary to a booker and later did some publicity for the outfit that handled me. That’s how I met her. We did okay for a while,” he said. “She had the looks and figure and she knew how to dress. It could have worked out if I’d been in another business. But this”—he waved a hand at the music—“is a thing you’ve got to do your own way. For me that means up half the night, most nights, getting around and talking shop with the boys, and playing the angles with guys that maybe you don’t like but have to pretend you do because writing the song is only part of it. Me, I like it. Nadine didn’t after the first few months. Also”—he indicated the piano again—“she had a tin ear, which doesn’t help any in this business.”
He took a breath and said, “I guess this picking away at a piano, reaching for chords, going back over the same phrase time after time, could get on your nerves—if you had to listen to it. And if you got a temper like Nadine had—well, I ain’t the easiest guy in the world to get along with, either. It got so she’d go off on trips and come back and pretty soon we’d be at it again. Arguin’, scrappin’. I guess what she really wanted was something more solid, like having a home and regular hours, and a substantial sort of a guy, if you know what I
mean.”
Holland nodded to show that he did.
“So the divorce was what we wanted.” Winsor shrugged. “And the price was right. So that’s it. I understand she’s got a good guy lined up and—”
“Sure,” Holland said, interrupting. “That’s why we think Drake went to your wife and threatened to expose that phony evidence and maybe get the divorce set aside—unless she paid him off.”
Winsor studied him a moment. “You got some idea Nadine killed Drake?”
“We got a motive, haven’t we? Look,” he said before Winsor could speak. “This guy she’s engaged to is maybe the solid kind you say she always wanted. Older, but with plenty of money and a good family. With him your wife would be set for life. But maybe if he knew about that fraud, maybe if he had to wait around for another divorce and all that, he might get to thinking and back out or change his mind. Suppose Drake threatened her? Suppose he—”
“How was he killed?”
“Shot.”
“Then forget it,” Winsor said. “Nadine wasn’t that kind. You see that wall?” He pointed to a spot near the doorway where the plaster had been chipped. “A pitcher,” he said. “That sort of thing she could do on account of she was hotheaded. Heaved things. Sometimes at me and sometimes just for the hell of it. She might bash a guy’s brains in with anything that was handy, but she wouldn’t go around with a gun or plan to kill anybody. Not Nadine.”
“If she was mad enough,” Holland said. “She might stay mad long enough to get a gun.”
Winsor opened his mouth and said, “Ahh!” a derisive sound which suggested he found the idea preposterous. “You don’t get mad at a blackmailer. You’d get scared, maybe hate him. If you thought you could get away with knocking him off you might even plan something.”
Holland nodded to show he agreed.
“But that ain’t Nadine,” Winsor said. “She was never one for scheming much. I understand she had a good thing in this Baldwin guy. A respectable character, like you say. Settle down. Maybe even have some kids. That’s what she had her eye on and if Drake was going to foul her up she’d have paid him off. She had some dough. Enough for a tramp like Drake.”
Holland had no intention of arguing with Winsor and saw no point in going into possibilities and premises as yet unsuggested. He said he was glad to have Winsor’s reaction. He said that, speaking for the Crombie Agency, he hoped Winsor would forget Drake’s proposition.
“Things like that give the rest of us investigators a bad name,” he said.
“Don’t give it a thought.” Winsor stood up and walked over to the foyer. “What did you say your name was?” He laughed. “In case I ever get in a spot where I need a guy in your line.”
“Holland.”
“The Crombie Agency, right?” Winsor opened the door. For a final word he said it was too bad about Drake, but as for figuring Nadine had anything to do with murder, Holland was simply wasting his time.
seventeen
NADINE WINSOR was at home when Holland called the second time and when she opened the door she seemed genuinely glad to see him.
“Why, Mr. Holland,” she said. “Come in, come in.”
He followed her into a squarish living-room somewhat less pretentious than the one her husband occupied, but pleasant enough in its chintzy, feminine fashion. Some of the furniture was in bleached wood, the slip covers on the two large chairs and the divan were gay but worn along the bindings. One of these chairs had been moved over to an open window and a fashion magazine lay on a footstool. Now she moved this aside and waved him to the divan.
“I’m, trying to keep cool,” she said. “It isn’t easy in the city. Would you say it was too early for a drink?”
Holland watched her tuck her blouse into the waistband of her cord skirt. The blouse had wrinkled some from the heat of her body, and even with her stomach pulled in and her breasts high she had trouble getting it adjusted smoothly.
“Some day,” she said, “somebody’ll make a blouse that’s long enough. What did you say about the drink?”
Holland thanked her. When he said it was a bit early for him she sat down, brushed some stray wisps of her copper hair back from her clear white forehead, then eyed him curiously as she settled herself and waited for him to speak.
It was not an easy thing for Holland to do. Because what little he had seen of this woman he had liked, and it occurred to him that what he had to say would not only be unwelcome but might well put him in a position where he would have to bully her with threats. He could feel the perspiration starting to creep out on his forehead, but he looked right at her when he spoke.
“I haven’t had a chance to talk to you about Roger Drake,” he said. “I wonder if you knew that the police know you were in the guesthouse bathroom Friday night.”
He could tell at once that she did not know, that the police for reasons of their own had withheld this information. Something flickered in her green eyes and she seemed to catch her breath though she made no sound. Her dark-red mouth twisted in a crooked smile and her throaty voice sounded reasonably surprised.
“But how could they?” she asked. “I wasn’t there.”
Holland explained how and when the bathroom had been cleaned, patiently adding the details that Sam Crombie had given him.
“You were there,” he said. “Furthermore”—he paused because he wasn’t sure on this point but he wanted to be as convincing as possible—“they found the cigarette you smoked while you waited in that second bedroom. What they don’t know,” he added, pausing to give emphasis to his statement, “is that I saw you come into your room a couple of minutes after I heard the shot.”
Somewhere in her face a muscle or nerve twitched and grew still. “That’s a lie,” she said, no longer polite or even pretending.
Holland explained where he had been standing that night and how he happened to be there, being explicit and choosing his words with care.
“You came into your room. I saw you undress.”
Her face grew stiff and dead white across the cheekbones. He thought for a moment she was going to scream at him because he remembered the things her husband had said about her temper. Then, with a visible and obvious effort, she got control of herself. She sat up and pulled her shoulders back while the blouse tightened all along the front.
“I was in bed,” she said flatly. “There was no light on in my room at any time after that.”
Holland went on in the same level phrases. “You turned on the light in the bathroom,” he said. “You were wearing a blouse something like that one, only greenish. When you tossed that aside you unfastened your brassière and as it came loose you stepped back into the bathroom. Less than a minute later the light went off.”
He paused, seeing her determination dissolve and the quick disintegration of the mask she had tried so hard to maintain. Her gaze wavered and fell, the red mouth starting to quiver and a slackness moving quickly into her face.
“I haven’t told the police,” he said, “but don’t ask me why. You know you were at that guesthouse very close to the time Drake was killed. I know you were and so will the police when I tell them what I’ve told you. And unless you give me the truth I’ve got to tell them; I may have to anyway, but I’m willing to listen first.”
He hesitated again and said, “Because the way it stacks now it looks like one of two things. Either you killed Drake—I can give you the motive from reports he left and a talk I had with your husband—or you know who did. You couldn’t have been that close without knowing something.” He leaned back, feeling hot, uncomfortable, and a little ashamed. “Well?” he said when she did not answer.
She stood up, whirling away from him. She walked across the room and came back, the temper all gone from her now. One side of her blouse had again pulled loose to hang outside the waistband of her skirt, and across her back the fabric clung to the moist skin beneath it.
“If I tell you, you’ll go to the police,” she said.
�
�Probably.”
“But I can’t—I mean how can I know what to do?” She stopped in front of him as he came to his feet, panic and fear and perhaps a little calculation in the torment of her gaze. “My God, can’t you give me time to think? I can’t just—”
“How much time?”
“A few hours. Oh, I don’t know,” she added desperately. “How do you expect me to know anything?”
“Wait a minute.” Holland spoke quietly, afraid that her approaching hysteria would spoil everything. “Take it easy. You can have time to think if you’ll tell the truth. Suppose you tell me what you can now.” He glanced at his watch and saw that it was a quarter of three. “Say four hours. Suppose I come back at seven?”
She looked at him, thinking hard. “Eight. Come at eight.”
“All right.”
“You won’t go to the police until then? Promise?”
Holland was getting a little confused. He couldn’t figure out what came next or why she should be so determined that he delay going to the police; what he did know was that she had something on her mind and he had to find out what he could while he had the chance.
“All right,” he said. “Providing you come clean now.”
She sat down at once, folding her hands on one knee as she leaned forward.
“I was there.”
“Because he was blackmailing you?”
“Yes. It was about the divorce Charlie and I got, just like you said. Drake used to be a partner to the man who worked for this lawyer and—”
Holland cut her off. He said he knew all about how Drake got his information.
“He said if he told what he knew they’d throw out the divorce and I’d have to get another one. I knew he was right and I was afraid, because I wasn’t sure what Arthur would think, or do. I got the shakes, I worried myself sick about it. He came to me first on Wednesday, and then on Friday he said he couldn’t wait any longer. He told me to come to his place later, after I was sure everyone had gone to bed. He said we could talk it over but I’d better be ready to pay off. He wanted five thousand.”
The Frightened Fianc?e Page 14
