by Alice Duncan
“Are you sure you’re all right?” was all she said.
She sounded so concerned, I almost cried. You could bet any amount of money you wanted to, if you did such things, that our mother wasn’t going to be sweet like that.
“I’m fine,” I said upon a deep and heartfelt sigh. “A little dirty, is all.” That wasn’t quite true, since I had numerous cuts and scrapes here and there, but none of them were serious.
“Well, take care of yourself, and I’ll try to keep Mother calm.”
“Thank you.” This time we both sighed. “Do your best, anyhow,” I said, feeling hopeless and almost hating our father for putting us through this ordeal with Mother.
After my telephone call the interrogation process (Ernie said it was only questioning, but I know what it felt like to me) took hours and hours.
“If you’d bothered to tell me what you were working on and what you’d discovered at the case, this wouldn’t have happened,” I told Ernie at one point.
After rolling his eyes, Ernie said, “Dammit, Mercy, you’re not a copper or a trained investigator. You’re a secretary, and you have no business questioning people involved in the case, much less haring off to have lunch with the suspects.
“I didn’t suspect her,” I said in my own defense. “Did you know she was Miss Lloyd’s sister?”
“Not then. But you should have wondered why she was being so chummy with you that she offered to drive you to hell and gone to eat lunch.”
“That’s unfair, Ernie Templeton! If you didn’t suspect her, how was I supposed to suspect her?”
“Suspicion has nothing to do with it!”
“You’re being completely irrational. I thought Sylvia Dunstable and I were friends. It’s perfectly natural to take a meal with a friend!”
“Children, children,” said Phil before either of us could say anything else.
I glared at Ernie, who glared back at me. He was being so unfair.
After clearing his throat, Phil hurried to speak as if he was afraid to leave any spaces of silence that Ernie or I might choose to fill with accusations. I kept glaring. So did Ernie.
Phil said, “We picked Miss Lloyd up for questioning, because it seemed to us that she was the only person who could possibly have killed Mrs. Hartland the way she was killed.”
“That makes sense to me. And do you know what she used? It was—”
“Mercy!” That was Ernie, and he stomped my words flat. “Let Phil explain, why don’t you?”
I glared some more, but recognized the validity of his comment, blast it.
Phil went on. “After we picked her up and questioned her extensively, Miss Lloyd told us that she and Miss Dunstable are sisters. We wore her down, you see,” Phil said placatingly. I guess he was afraid Ernie and I might have a knock-down, drag-out fight right there in the police station. “She told us about the datura.”
“Did she tell you how she got it?”
“She said he soaked some poisoned arrow tips she’d taken from some director’s house.”
“Amory Jordan’s,” I said, glad to tell him something he didn’t already know.
“Oh, was it Jordan?”
“Yes, according to Miss Dunstable.”
Phil wrote it down.
“Okay. She told us about the datura and how she’d pricked Mrs. Hartland under her bracelet with a needle dipped in the stuff, and how she’d made another pinprick in the back of her neck. I guess the coroner didn’t find the prick under her bracelet, or he thought it had been made by the clasp or something.”
“And just exactly when did you first suspect Miss Lloyd?” I asked, feeling cranky as all get out.
“When we checked out her past and discovered she’d acted in blue picture.” I’m pretty sure Phil colored a little bit when he said the bit about the blue movies.
“And yet nobody bothered to tell me,” I grumbled.
“Why should anybody tell you?” demanded Ernie. “You’re a damned secretary! You’re not supposed to be investigating anything at all, much less murder!”
“I wouldn’t have had to investigate anything if you’d helped Mr. Easthope when he asked you to! Or if you’d bothered to tell me what was going on!” I retorted hotly. “All I knew was that Rupert Mullins was no murderer, but he was being held in jail for committing murder anyway, and then you started suspecting Lulu, of all people!”
“Nuts,” bellowed Ernie. “You just can’t keep out of the damned way, can you?”
“Hey,” said Phil. “Let’s all calm down, all right?”
Ernie huffed. So did I.
Phil continued, “When we got to the Figueroa Building to bring Miss Lloyd in—”
“Why did you go to the Figueroa Building?” I asked. “Why didn’t you pick her up at her house?”
Ernie snarled something incoherent, but Phil only sighed and explained. “We called her home, and her maid told us she’d gone to the Figueroa Building to consult with her attorney.”
“I see,” I said formally. “Thank you.”
“Anyhow, when we got there, Miss LaBelle told us the two of you had gone out to lunch.”
“And if Lulu hadn’t told us what kind of car Dunstable drove, you’d probably be a dead duck right now,” Ernie growled.
“I would not be a dead duck, Ernest Templeton! I saved myself from being shot by being quick and resourceful, curse you! You sure as anything didn’t rescue me! I was already rescued!” I was so angry that if it hadn’t been for my early childhood training, I’d probably have bopped Ernie with the candlestick telephone sitting on Phil’s desk.
“You call that rescuing yourself? You were scrambling up a damned hill when I found you, remember!”
“That’s only because I thought you were Miss Lloyd and Miss Dunstable’s accomplices! If you hadn’t taken up the whole blasted roadway, I’d have run down to Figueroa and hailed somebody!”
“You’d have hailed somebody? Is that your idea of rescuing yourself?”
“Ernest Templeton, you’re the most obnoxious, pigheaded—”
“Cut it out, both of you.”
Phil sounded more than a trifle tense, so I glowered at him next. Darn it, none of this was my fault, and I considered that I’d behaved downright heroically in thinking of that stupid brake lever in that stupid machine. Would it kill Ernest Templeton, P.I., to acknowledge that I’d done something worthwhile? Blast the man.
“How did you know where Miss Dunstable took me?”
“We had a hell of a time tracing that one stupid car in all the traffic. You were almost out of sight by the time we got to the Figueroa Building. Then we almost lost it three or four times. We had to backtrack a couple of times, but a guy selling tamales on a street corner finally told us he’d seen a car of that description going up the hill.”
“Oh.”
“We found you in time, and that’s the important part,” Phil added in a softer tone.
“I was already safe,” I muttered, wanting someone to recognize my pluck.
“Yes, but I mean we got Miss Dunstable.”
“Thanks to me,” I said, sounding cantankerous even to my own ears. “If I hadn’t pushed her wretched motorcar over the ledge, she’d have got away.”
“Christ,” Ernie mumbled under his breath.
I couldn’t help myself. I kicked him.
“Ow!” He looked daggers at me.
“Oh, be quiet.”
“Stop it!”
I’d never heard Phil sound so angry, so I stopped it. So did Ernie, although his scowl didn’t abate.
Phil went on, “Jacqueline Lloyd and Sylvia Dunstable—by the way, their real names are Pansy and Ida Flynt—were being blackmailed by Miss Hedda Heartwood because Miss Heartwood had learned that Pansy had acted in some scandalous pictures before she got famous.”
“They were pretty bad pictures, too,” Ernie said, his voice once again level. He only ever hollered at me, darn him.
“It’s because they were very poor when they
moved here from Tennessee, and she had to support the both of them somehow,” I chimed in, just in case they didn’t know that already. “Miss Dunstable said they’d had a miserable life back home with a wicked uncle, and they came to Los Angeles to escape.”
Ernie looked as if he was going to explode again, but Phil said quickly, “Yes. Miss Lloyd told us that.” He shot Ernie a quelling look and Ernie, to my surprise, was quelled. At least he didn’t holler at me.
“Anyhow,” Phil continued, “they both thought they’d put their past behind them when Miss Lloyd was discovered by Goldfish and started getting good-paying parts. By that time Miss Dunstable was working for Carstairs. Evidently she’d sought him out because he was known to work with picture people. That way, she’d have inside information on who was doing what and who was being sued, and who was trying to cover up things they didn’t want anyone to know. She was the one who first realized Hedda Heartwood didn’t earn her entire living by writing her gossip column.”
I felt my eyes widen. “You mean she blackmailed other people, too?”
Nodding, Phil said, “I guess she had a thriving business going. I’m kind of surprised nobody’d murdered her before the Flynt sisters got to her.”
“Gracious sakes.” I pondered my meeting with Hedda Heartwood. “She did kind of look like a weasel. I guess she acted like one, too.”
“Apparently she did.”
“Are you going to release Rupert Mullins now?” I admit I sounded a trifle belligerent, but that’s only because I’d known ever since they’d arrested Rupert that they’d incarcerated the wrong man.
“That’s already done,” said Phil in a soothing sort of voice.
“Good.” I didn’t feel like being soothed, darn it. “I hope Lulu knows he’s out of the clink.”
“She’s the one who came and picked him up.”
I lifted my chin and sniffed. “Good. And what a monumental miscarriage of justice that was.”
“Justice wasn’t bruised, Mercy.” Ernie sounded bored. “You just don’t understand tactics.”
“Tactics, my foot! It was wrong to arrest him, and I knew it, even if you didn’t! Why, that poor boy might be damaged for life from this experience.”
“Oh, brother.”
I’d probably have argued some more, but at that point James Carstairs entered the police station. He looked less dapper than usual. I suppose that was to be expected. After all, he’d not only lost a promising client in Miss Lloyd, who’d turned out to be a murderer, but he’d also lost his secretary, who was also one. A murderer, I mean. He seemed to brighten slightly when he saw me, and he removed his hat politely and said, “Good afternoon, Miss Allcutt.”
“How do you do?” I said, also politely.
“Not so well,” he muttered. Turning to Phil, he demanded, “Where’s Jacqueline? Where’s Sylvia? This has got to be some kind of terrible mistake.”
“It’s no mistake, I’m afraid,” said Phil. He sounded as if he felt kind of sorry for Mr. Carstairs. “They both confessed to the murders of Mrs. Heartwood and Mr. Hartland.”
“Oh, my God.” Mr. Carstairs sank into one of the chairs near Phil’s desk and slapped his hat into his lap. “This is just awful.”
Ernie said, “And Dunstable would have killed Miss Allcutt if we hadn’t found her in time.”
“She would have killed me if I hadn’t saved myself, you mean!” I glared daggers at Ernie, who scowled back.
“Good God,” said Mr. Carstairs. “I had no idea. And here I thought she was such an efficient secretary and overall pleasant person.”
I sniffed. “So did I until she pulled a gun on me.”
Ernie grunted. I ignored him and gave Mr. Carstairs a sympathetic smile.
“I’m so sorry, Miss Allcutt.”
“It wasn’t you who pulled the gun,” I told him, feeling rather noble.
“I guess not, but I’m still sorry about it.” He offered me a weak smile, Mr. Carstairs said, “Say, Miss Allcutt, you wouldn’t be interested in a change of employment, would you? I’m sure I can pay you more than he can.” He hooked a thumb at Ernie.
Ernie said, “Hey!” He looked like he wanted to kill someone—undoubtedly me, although he probably wouldn’t mind shooting Mr. Carstairs along with me.
As angry as I was at Ernie right then, I darned near took Mr. Carstairs up on the offer. Squinting at him and then at Ernie, and deciding they both were despicable creatures, I said, “Let me think about it.”
Ernie said, “Hey!” again.
I said, “Hmph,” and spent a few minutes thinking about all the movie stars I might meet if I worked for Mr. Carstairs while Phil continued to divulge information about the Hartland cases. He didn’t tell me anything I hadn’t already deduced on my own, thereby proving that I was a good detective, in spite of what Ernie thought of my deductive powers.
Naturally, I wasn’t about to change employers. As irritating as Ernie Templeton could be a good deal of the time, I knew in my heart that I’d learn more about the human condition by working with him than by working for Mr. Carstairs. After all, Ernie dealt with real problems. Mr. Carstairs dealt with the fantasy world of the motion pictures. Although, as had just been demonstrated, sometimes the sordidness of the “real” world slopped over into the pictures. Or vice versa.
I must have sighed pretty heavily because Ernie startled me by rising to his feet and saying, “I’ve got to get Mercy home, Phil. It’s been a long day, and her mother won’t be happy with her condition.” He gave me one of his insouciant grins, and I only barely restrained myself from kicking him again.
“That’s probably a good idea,” said Phil, and he, too, rose.
So did Mr. Carstairs. “Think about my offer, Miss Allcutt. You’d be privy to all sorts of inside information.” He smiled a winning smile.
I didn’t feel like smiling back. I was sore, scraped, achy, and, as our Irish cook used to say back in Boston, mad as a wet hen. Nevertheless I rose, trying to be graceful, from the hard wooden chair I’d been sitting in for what seemed like all eternity, and I did smile when I said, “Thank you, Mr. Carstairs.” Then I stopped smiling, turned to Ernie and said, “I’ll be fine, thank you. I don’t need you to take me home.”
“Nuts.” Ernie grabbed my arm. “You’re in no shape to go anywhere alone.”
Rather than make a scene in the police department, I only hissed, “Curse you, Ernie Templeton! Release my arm!”
“Not until you’re tucked safely away in my Studebaker, damn it.”
And he hauled me across the floor and out the door and into the late-evening sunshine of that sultry August day. I didn’t have the will or the energy to fight him. Curse me, too.
* * * * *
Mother hit the roof when I finally got home that day. Mrs. Biddle opened the door to Ernie and me—he wouldn’t even let me walk to Chloe’s door unaided, the fiend—and I tried to slither out of the way and up the stairs before anyone else saw me, but my maneuverings didn’t work. I hadn’t really expected them too. Mother’s had a whole lot of experience in thwarting my intentions, and she’d become an expert at it over the years.
“Mercedes Louise Allcutt, look at you!”
I couldn’t help myself. I glanced down at my filthy person. I was a mess, all right.
“What do you have to say for yourself, young lady?” Mother demanded.
“Um . . .”
“Mother,” said Chloe, bless her heart, “Mercy’s obviously had a very difficult day. Let her get cleaned up before you cross-examine her.”
“Cross-examine her? What kind of language is that, Clovilla Allcutt Nash?” Mother turned her icy, infuriated eyes upon her older daughter. While her attention was off me, I fled. I know I was being cowardly, but I couldn’t seem to help myself. It had been a really awful day, and all I wanted was Buttercup and a bath. Not together, naturally. I hurried up the stairs to my room as fast as my cuts and bruises would allow, listening to Chloe and Mother go at it in the entryway. Chloe was t
he best sister any girl could have, and I vowed I’d make this up to her somehow, someday.
Unfortunately, bathing, cuddling Buttercup, and using iodine and bandages on my various wounds didn’t take the rest of my life. It only took about forty-five minutes, and then I knew it was my duty to go downstairs and confront my family. So I did, my poor knees throbbing with every step. I held Buttercup in my arms as a sort of buffer, although I knew I wasn’t being kind to her, my precious poodle. Then again, what are dogs for if not to offer aid and comfort to the afflicted? And, darn it, I was afflicted. What’s more, I knew I was going to suffer still more affliction once I hit the bottom of the staircase and had to go face the music. Or, rather, face my mother, which was infinitely worse.
Trying not to hobble and still holding Buttercup, I made my way toward the living room. I was surprised to hear a good deal of conversation therefrom. Was that Francis Easthope’s cultured voice I discerned?
And—good Lord—was Ernie still there? Hadn’t Mother tossed him out on his ear yet?
Thinking that perhaps all wasn’t lost and that the evening might not be as hellishly miserable as I’d anticipated, I entered the room. I’d had to wash my hair, and it wasn’t quite dry yet, but thanks to my shingled bob it fell neatly into place anyway. No matter what my mother thinks, short hair is ever so much more practical than long hair. I’d also clad myself in a neat dress of blue georgette that fell a little below my knees. I figured that although Chloe would disapprove, claiming I was looking dowdy, the length covered the worst of my knee scrapes. One of these days, I simply had to get myself a pair of those long Chinese pajama things that Chloe liked to wear indoors.
“So it was her intransigence that led to her being in danger?”
My mother. I couldn’t tell whom she was talking to but knew darned well whom she was talking about. I decided I’d better hang back a bit while I figured who exactly was in the living room. She didn’t sound as angry as she had when she’d met me at the door, but her tone was still awfully chilly.
“Well, I don’t know that I’d call it intransigence exactly.”
Ernie. And, by George, he sounded as if he was almost sticking up for me! Would wonders never cease?
