Angel's Flight (A Mercy Allcutt Mystery)

by Alice Duncan

  “Sixteen?” If what I was inferring was correct, I was horrified.

  “Sixteen. I was fourteen. Jacqueline worked like a slave to put me through secretarial school. I won’t sully your pure little ears telling you what she had to do to keep us in food and clothing.”

  “How . . . how awful.”

  She laughed another unpleasant laugh. “You have no idea. You,” she repeated scornfully, “know nothing about how to survive in this world, do you?”

  “Um . . . I . . . um, don’t guess I do.” It was a miserable confession, but it was also the truth.

  “Anyhow, eventually Jacqueline got a break. I was already Mr. Carstairs’s secretary by that time—and what a miserable creature he is, by the way, always groping and grasping and pretending to be a gentleman.”

  I gulped but didn’t speak. It would appear, however, that Ernie had been correct about Mr. Carstairs.

  “After those first few blue pictures, Jacqueline acted as an extra in a couple of cowboy pictures. Then Mr. Goldfish saw her and cast her in Whispering Oaks.”

  “Oh, I saw that, and she was wonderful. In fact, the entire picture was wonderful. My sister and I went to see it, and—” I stopped babbling.

  “Everybody saw it. Including Hedda Heartwood.” She gave me another sour look. “You don’t know anything about blackmailers, either, I suppose. In fact, you don’t know a single thing about how the real world works do you, Miss High and Mighty Boston Allcutt?”

  That hurt. “But I’m trying!” I cried. “I truly am trying to learn how the rest of the world lives. I want to fit in. Truly, I do!”

  “I suppose you are.” She heaved a big sigh. “And you’re really quite nice. In fact, in spite of yourself, I actually like you.”

  “Th-thank you. I like . . . liked you, too.”

  She heaved another huge sigh. “But I’m sorry, Miss Allcutt. You won’t be able to work at learning about life any longer.”

  “Um . . . I don’t think I understand.” What with that gun pointing at me and all, I thought I comprehended her meaning quite well, but I was hoping to be surprised.

  “I’m afraid I’m going to have to kill you.”

  No surprise there. My heart, which had been hovering around my knees, sank to the earth beneath the automobile. “You don’t really need to do that, you know.”

  “Oh, yes I do.”

  “But why? I’m not going to say anything to anybody. Honest! I never would have come up with the sister motif. Truly, I wouldn’t.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You’ll have to tell somebody, because you’re too much of a Goody Two-Shoes not to.”

  “Oh, no I’m not,” I assured her. “This will be a lesson in survival for me. A salutary lesson, in fact. I won’t breathe a word to anyone. It will be our secret.” Even I could tell I was lying. Talk about innocence of the world! I was disgusted with myself. Darn it, I was fighting for my life here, and I couldn’t even tell a decent fib!

  Her smile this time was actually rather kind. “You’re a lousy liar, Miss Allcutt.”

  I already knew that.

  “The thing that amuses me is that you can’t seem to help yourself. You’re an honestly good person.”

  Feeling defensive as well as scared to death, I asked tartly, “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Not a thing, my dear. You should consider yourself lucky to have achieved your present age with your goodness intact. Not all of us have been so fortunate.”

  “Lots of people from unfortunate circumstances don’t kill other people,” I muttered.

  “Not all that many.”

  “I don’t believe that for a minute. Why only last month—” I sensed Miss Dunstable’s lack of interest in my detectival career, so I ceased talking about it.

  Choosing another tactic, which would probably prove as unproductive as the last one, I said, “Well, if you’re going to do me in anyway, won’t you please tell me why you killed the Hartlands? I gather that Mrs. Hartland was blackmailing your sister.”

  “She was, indeed, the miserable cow.”

  “Ah.” I still couldn’t quite grasp that the two women, Miss Lloyd and Miss Dunstable, were siblings. “But why did you have to kill her? Didn’t Miss Lloyd make enough money to . . . well, to pay her off?”

  “Don’t be such a baby. There’s no paying off blackmailers, Miss Allcutt. If you give in to them, they’ll bleed you forever.”

  “Oh.” I guess that made sense. If a person viewed another person as a source of income, I don’t suppose a one-time payment would dissuade him or her from tapping that source again if money got tight. “But why did you have to kill her son?”

  “You hit the nail on the head earlier today. He decided to carry on the family business,” she said dryly. “He suspected Jacqueline had killed his mother. Then he went through her papers and discovered the reason. I’m sure Jacqueline wasn’t the only one, either. Really, Miss Allcutt, Jacqueline and I did the world of motion pictures a favor.”

  “Were you the one who killed Mr. Hartland? I mean, was your sister truly knocked out at the hospital?” My voice was small, and I asked out of faint hope. If she wasn’t already a seasoned murderer, perhaps she’d balk at killing me.

  No such luck. “Of course I did. I donned a white outfit and pretended to be a nurse.” She uttered a short laugh. “I guess acting runs in the family. He was out as cold as Jacqueline was, so I just used a pillow to smother him. The fool.”

  Feeling hopeless but curious, I asked, “And Miss Lloyd killed his mother.”

  “Precisely.”

  “There was a prick on her back. Was that where the poison was administered?”

  “Heavens no! That was a red herring.” She squinted at me doubtfully. “Do you know what a red herring is?”

  “Yes. I read detective fiction.” I’d wanted to write detective fiction, but it didn’t look as if my wants would be met. And I was only twenty-one, for heaven’s sake!

  Another sardonic bark of laughter met this statement. “Oh, my, Miss Allcutt, you don’t know how lucky you are, to have to learn about these things through works of fiction.”

  “I don’t feel very lucky at the moment.”

  She sobered. “No, I’m sure you don’t.”

  “What poison did you use?”

  “Datura.”

  “I read about that at the library. How’d you get it? I mean, you can’t just walk into a pharmacy and ask for datura, can you?”

  “Goodness, no. Jacqueline had to snitch a couple of darts from Amory Jordan’s collection of artifacts.”

  I’m pretty sure I gasped. Amory Jordan was one of the biggest names in the picture business, being a producer and director of all sorts of movies. He was also a well-known world traveler who was always going on African safaris and trips down the Amazon and things like that. I’d read about him in the newspapers even before I moved to Los Angeles.

  “I think he got the darts in some God-awful South American country when he went on an Amazon trip.” She snorted. “Some people have more money than sense. Why in the name of everything holy somebody would want to visit a tropical hell like that is beyond me.”

  I could have enlightened her, being of an adventurous nature myself, but I sensed she didn’t really care. “How did she get the poison from the dart?”

  Miss Dunstable gave a careless shrug. “Soaked it.”

  “So where was the point of entry of the poison if it wasn’t that prick on the back of her neck?”

  She smiled. “Why, on her wrist, just under her bracelet. Jacqueline had to hold the old witch’s hand, if you’ll recall. All it took was a little prick, and voila! No more Hedda Heartwood. She pricked that place on her back to throw the coppers off the scent.”

  “How did she do that when she was holding her hand?”

  “Jacqueline is extremely nimble-fingered, Miss Allcutt.” Again the sneer.

  I decided not to ask when and where Miss Lloyd had practiced her finger agility. “Then she poked Mrs
. Hartland’s neck when she pretended to faint?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I think she succeeded in throwing the police off the track,” I said, sounding as defeated as I felt.

  “I think she did, too.”

  “Was it she who caused Mr. Hartland to faint?”

  “Yes. Again proving her dexterity. Gave him a whiff of chloroform.” Miss Dunstable looked bemused for a second. “I’m surprised no one else smelled it.”

  “So am I.” Blast it, if I’d sat next to him, I’ll bet I’d have smelled it before it dissipated. But Jacqueline Lloyd wasn’t about to give herself away, and poor Mrs. Easthope had probably been too rattled to notice anything out of the ordinary.

  Miss Dunstable heaved yet another sigh. I sensed she really didn’t much want to kill me but knew where her duty lay. I understood all about doing things out of a sense of duty, oddly enough, but it didn’t make me feel any better. “But it’s time we got this over with. I only have an hour for lunch.”

  “You’re going to murder me and then go back to work as if nothing happened?” My mind boggled. It had been misbehaving for some time.

  She didn’t react to the word murder, which I’d used on purpose in order to jar her. “Why, yes. As I said, I’m every bit as good an actress as Jacqueline is. She was the prettier of the two of us, though, so we decided she should be the one to go into the pictures, and I’d be the one to snag a job in a Hollywood attorney’s office.”

  “Ah.” Their foresight and planning might have garnered my admiration if it weren’t for the murder thing.

  “Therefore, as much as I don’t really want to kill you, I have to, you see. It’s a pity, but there you go.”

  There I went, indeed. Nuts. I eyed her gun. “Are you sure you know how to use that?”

  She laughed again. I didn’t like her laugh at all. And to think I used to admire her so. “Miss Allcutt, my sister and I learned to shoot before we could read. We had to in order to put food on the table. We had a very hard life in Tennessee.”

  Good Lord. And I’d never held a gun in my entire life. It wasn’t the first time I’d considered the disparity between people like me, who were born into wealth, and everybody else. If I got out of this one alive, I’d definitely increase my donations to various good causes.

  She’d put the car in neutral, pulled the emergency brake handle—it pulled up from the floor—and held the gun steady when she opened the driver’s-side door. Keeping an eagle eye on me as she exited the automobile, she said, “Get out of the car now, Miss Allcutt. We need to finish this up so I can get back to work.”

  Finish this up? Damn the woman!

  The fact that I’d actually thought a real, honest-to-goodness swear word shocked me. That was a good thing, because my befuddlement about my situation suddenly vanished in a puff of ire and pure rage took its place. I decided it didn’t matter if she had a gun and I didn’t. She was going to have to work to kill me, curse her black heart.

  Slowly I opened the car door. All things considered, it looked to me as if I might actually have a chance if I were daring, something I hadn’t had much experience being thus far in my life. Still, if I could only . . .

  “Oh!” I cried, stumbling on the running board and catching myself on the car’s seat.

  “Stop that!” bellowed Miss Dunstable. “Get up this instant!”

  “I think I sprained my ankle,” I lied in a shaky voice. The shakiness was unfeigned, believe me.

  “Get up and I’ll put you out of your misery.” To spur me on my way, I presume, she fired a shot that would have killed me had I still been standing.

  “Don’t do that! I’m getting up. It hurts, is all.”

  “Hurry up. I don’t have any more time to waste on you.”

  From my crouched position, I could tell that Miss Dunstable was expecting to see me rise up from the passenger side of the machine. She wasn’t looking below the window. Therefore, as quickly as I’d ever moved in my life, I darted across the seat, released the emergency brake and leaped back out of the car. Well, it was more of a scuttle than a leap, but you know what I mean.

  “What are you doing?” Shrieked Sylvia Dunstable, again pulling that wretched trigger and frightening me out of my skin.

  I didn’t answer. Rather, I pushed that stupid Model-T Ford as hard as I could from my very precarious crouched position, using the frame of the driver’s side door and the running board, as well as all the strength in my body.

  Darned if it didn’t work! The car started sliding slowly downhill.

  “Wait! Wait! What are you doing?”

  By that time I’d flattened myself on the ground, figuring that with the car in the way and moving she’d have a harder time fixing an aim on my body. With my heart in my throat, I could only see Miss Dunstable’s feet as she danced on the edge of the embankment trying to avoid being struck by her car. I think she attempted to get into the automobile so she could put it into gear and pull out the emergency brake, because I saw the door open but then, with a terrible crunching sound, the car’s tires slipped over the ledge and slid right downhill, taking Miss Dunstable with it, carried along by the open door. I heard her screech in astonishment, and then I heard one last explosion as she pulled the trigger a final time. I don’t know where that shot went, but it was nowhere near me, thank God.

  I didn’t stick around to see what had happened to Miss Dunstable or if her Model T had stopped somewhere on the down side of the hill. Rather, to the crashings and scrapings of metal against loose rock as the car slid and skidded, I picked myself up from my dusty refuge and ran like a madwoman down the hill toward Figueroa where I hoped like anything some kindhearted pedestrian or driver would rescue me.

  To my horror, I hadn’t run past the first bend in that cursed twisty road before I saw another automobile winding its way up the hill. Instantly my thoughts fastened upon Jacqueline Lloyd, and I turned and tried to scrabble my way up the side of the hill away from the drop-off. I wasn’t making much headway since the earth was dry and crumbly, and every time I grabbed on to a bush to pull myself up, it dislodged and we both tumbled backward. Nevertheless, those wretched murdering people were going to have to labor valiantly if they intended to kill me. I wasn’t about to give up until I was dead, blast it. And if Jacqueline Lloyd dared to grab one of my feet to keep me from climbing, I’d—

  “Damn it to hell and back again, Mercy Allcutt, come down from there!”

  Stunned, I slid backward down the slope, landing on my bottom in the rocky dirt road. It hurt.

  “Ernie?”

  He reached down and grabbed my arm. “Are you all right?”

  “I-I think so. But, Ernie, it’s Miss—”

  “Dunstable. I know. Dammit, how did you end up here? We were following you all the way from Chinatown. Didn’t you suspect anything, dammit?”

  I tried to brush myself off, but Ernie still held one of my arms. Anyhow, the task was impossible. It looked as if I’d managed to accumulate a whole acre or more of Southern California dirt during my various adventures.

  “Don’t swear at me.” My voice was small, though. I’d started having a reaction to everything and there was a lump in my throat. “I thought you were going to meet—” I decided I’d better not finish that sentence.

  “Better not stand there jawing, Ernie. We’ve got to pick up the other sister.”

  Phil Bigelow. I’d no sooner registered his presence than I found myself lifted into Ernie’s arms. There was nothing romantic about the gesture, believe me. He handled me as if I were a sack of potatoes, dumped me in the back seat of Phil’s police vehicle, and leaped into the front next to Phil. I hadn’t even stopped bouncing when Phil gunned the engine and the heavy car plowed ahead up the hill.

  “Where’s Dunstable?” Ernie growled.

  He was being so mean, I didn’t want to tell him. But I, like Sylvia Dunstable, knew where my duty lay. Besides, the horrible woman had tried to killed me. “I left her up the road a bit.” I’d
scold Ernie after Miss Dunstable had been picked up and jailed. If her Model T hadn’t squashed her. I shuddered at that thought.

  I needn’t have worried. We had no sooner rounded the bend in that stupid narrow road than we saw Miss Dunstable, looking a good deal less professional than usual, scrambling up to the road. Her spectacles were askew, she was bleeding from several cuts and scratches, and it looked to me as if she’d torn her stockings in her tumble downhill. What had been a perfectly lovely gray business suit was a dirty mess, and one of her sensible shoes was missing. If I didn’t know better, I’d have felt sorry for her.

  “What the hell happened here?” growled Ernie.

  Without waiting for an answer, he jumped out of the car and raced toward Miss Dunstable. Phil did likewise. What’s more, he drew his police weapon and yelled at the top of his lungs, “Stop in the name of the law, or I’ll shoot!”

  I hadn’t known policemen actually said things like that.

  We ended up with Phil driving back to the Los Angeles Police Station with me squished between him and Ernie in the front seat and Sylvia Dunstable, handcuffed and looking very upset, in the back seat. The only thing she said the whole way back was, “What about my machine?”

  Phil merely grunted. I presume that meant he didn’t give a rap about her car.

  It was only when I saw Jacqueline Lloyd stripped of her makeup did it register with me that she and Sylvia Dunstable, without her spectacles, looked somewhat alike. Some kind of detective I was.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I knew I’d be in for it when I returned to Chloe’s that day no matter what I did, as my clothing was wrecked, my fingernails showed definite evidence of having tried to climb a mountain, and there was dirt caked all over various parts of me. With Mother there, it wasn’t possible to sneak in and wash up before facing the family. I wish I had an apartment of my own to run away and hide in.

  But I didn’t.

  Therefore, since I knew I was going to be late getting home and I didn’t want to worry anyone, I telephoned Chloe from the police station to explain what had happened. Chloe gasped a couple of times, but she didn’t scold me.