by Alice Duncan
“Now, wait—”
“Show me your wrists,” I demanded. “There might still be rope burns on them.”
Without a word or a protest, something that only later astounded me as obedience to my orders was uncharacteristic for Ernie, he actually did as I’d asked without quibbling. He held out both wrists, pushed up his shirtsleeves, and we both bent over them, squinting like mad.
“It looks as if there’s still a little redness here.” I touched the inside of his left wrist.
Ernie bent closer. “I think you’re imagining that. Do you really think it’s still red? It doesn’t hurt any longer.”
My head snapped up. “So it did hurt at the time?”
“Of course, it hurt. I’d been twisting in that damned rope, and my wrists hurt like hell for a few days. There were even a few drops of blood.” He sounded as if he wanted sympathy, but I was in no mood to be handing him any. I was peeved as all get-out.
“You should have told the police that at the time, for heaven’s sake. Ernest Templeton, I don’t know what’s going to become of you.”
Ernie only let out a sigh.
So did I. “Well, I still think it looks as if it’s chafed or chapped or something. That could have been caused by the rope. Can’t those people—what do they call them? Pathologists or something like that? Can’t they tell if the chafing is due to rope burns?”
“I don’t know.”
We bent over his wrists again, staring. I was trying to discern anything that looked even vaguely rope-like in the faint redness remaining.
“Gee, I hope I’m not interrupting anything,” a voice came from behind me, making me leap up and utter a cowardly squeal.
“Damn it, Phil! Why’d you want to do that for?” Ernie didn’t seem any more pleased than I that his best friend had sneaked up on us. “Knock first, will you? Christ, you almost gave Mercy a heart attack.”
Well, I liked that! As if he hadn’t been as startled as I. But I decided it would be useless to quarrel about the point since we had bigger fish to fry.
Phil appeared a little abashed. “Sorry, guys. But what were you doing?”
I was still mad as a wet hen, as a maid of ours in Boston used to say, so I spoke first, and not kindly. “We were doing something you should have done last Thursday, Detective Philip Bigelow! We were looking for traces of rope burns on Ernie’s wrists. You wouldn’t believe me about finding him bound and gagged, but you couldn’t have denied evidence you could see with your own blind eyes, now, could you? And there was no way on this green earth that I could have tied him up as a cover, either, since I’d only been in the house for a short time when I found him. Which can be verified by placing a call to the taxicab company!”
“Uh—”
I honestly don’t know if it was Phil or Ernie who had tried to interrupt, but I was having none of it. “And, what’s more, Ernie saw a physician yesterday—at my insistence, by the way—and the doctor found bruises upon his body that are absolutely consistent with his having been tied and hauled up a flight of stairs!”
This time it was Phil who blinked at me.
Ernie said, “She’s right, Phil. On both counts.”
“Oh, my God,” said Phil, as if that would do any good. “I’m sorry, Ernie. We should have taken more notice of your health at the time. Although, in our defense, we generally concentrate on the corpse in situations like that, you know.”
“Well, you might have better spent some of your time by concentrating on the fellow who’s going to be blamed for creating the corpse, if you don’t start doing your job better!” I was still blazing with fury. Can you tell?
“Mercy,” Ernie said. “Simmer down, will you?”
Ooooh. I could have killed him myself in that instant. Since I couldn’t do that, I ranted on. “No! I will not simmer down. I won’t simmer down until I find the murderer of that ridiculous woman and you’re cleared absolutely of a crime you didn’t commit. If neither you nor the Los Angeles Police Department cares about justice, I do!”
And with that, I flounced out of the room and into my office, where I plunked myself down into my chair and darned near burst into tears. But I wouldn’t give either of those awful, officious, stupid men the satisfaction of seeing me cry.
Therefore, I decided to go down to the lobby and talk to Lulu. Maybe by the time I got back upstairs, I’d have calmed down some. I ran down the stairs as if pursued by demons, but was brought up short when I saw Lulu behind her desk in the lobby, filing her nails and talking animatedly with Mr. Emerald Buck, who’d propped himself on his push broom whilst he listened.
“I tell you, that house was like a castle or something,” Lulu told him. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
She was telling him all about Chloe’s house, no doubt. Ah, well. At least it was a change of topic from murder and mayhem. And at least Emerald Buck was a kindhearted gentleman who never told me to simmer down. Striving to attain some sort of inner peace, I strolled over to Lulu’s desk.
“Oh, hey, Mercy!” Lulu said happily. “I was just telling Mr. Buck about your sister’s house.”
“Sounds like a grand place,” said Mr. Buck. He had a lovely voice, deep and velvety. He’d told me once he sang in his church’s choir, and I could well believe it.
I said, “It’s nice, all right. Too bad they’re going to have to sell it.”
Lulu heaved a huge sigh. “Yeah. Boy, I’d give anything to live in a place like that.”
And that, as they say, was that. I decided then and there that if none of the men in my life gave a rap about what I did, said, or discovered, at least it might be possible for me to make Lulu happy. So I sat myself down in the chair facing Lulu’s desk and said, “I’ve actually been thinking of buying the place myself, Lulu. If I did, I’d have to get some tenants, since I don’t think I could make the payments all by myself.”
That wasn’t strictly the truth, since Great-Aunt Agatha had been most awfully generous in her gift to me after her death, but I didn’t want Lulu to know that. What I wanted was for Lulu—and perhaps another working girl or two—to have a chance to live as I’d lived my whole life long and had believed the rest of the world did, too, until I’d learned otherwise.”
I think Lulu had been stricken dumb, because she stared at me with her mouth open, and no words emerged.
It was Mr. Buck who broke the silence. “That’s a right kindly thing to do, Miss Allcutt.”
“I don’t think of it as being kindly,” I told him truthfully. “I just really like the house and the location, and would hate to live there all by myself. Well, with Buttercup, I mean.” I’d told Mr. Buck all about Buttercup. He approved of dogs, so I approved of him.
Which reminded me of something else. “Say, Mr. Buck, didn’t you mention once that your wife works as a cook and housekeeper for some folks on Carroll Avenue?”
“She do that,” Mr. Buck agreed, nodding.
“We’d need a cook and a housekeeper if I bought the house, wouldn’t we, Lulu?”
But Lulu still sat at her desk mute, her fingernail file held loosely in her hand, and stared at me as if I’d just offered her the moon and the stars and all the diamonds at that big jewelry store in New York. What’s the name of it? Tiffany’s? I think that’s it.
Unfortunately, it now looked as if Mr. Buck had been stricken with Lulu’s muteness. I hadn’t realized until that moment that such things were contagious. Or perhaps I’d been too precipitate again. I really had to work on moving up to things in a roundabout way so as not to shock people.
Well, it was too late for that now. I rose and said, “Please think about it, both of you. I’m going to talk to Chloe and Harvey about buying the house from them, and I’d love to have people I already know to share it with me.”
I figured I’d better get back to the office now that I’d calmed down a little, although I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t explode again if Ernie or Phil said or did something else to annoy me. It seemed I was a trifle touchy
that day.
Chapter Twelve
Lulu and I went to lunch together at twelve-thirty. We decided to stop at the little hot dog stand on the corner of Broadway and Sixth. I had sauerkraut and mustard on my dog to spite my mother, Ernie, Phil, and everyone else in the world who’d ever aggravated me. I don’t know what Lulu had on hers, but we sat on a bench in Pershing Square, listened to the street preachers rant, and my own personal lunch was very tasty.
Naturally, Lulu wanted to talk about my plans to buy Chloe’s house, so we discussed that. I wasn’t awfully interested in the topic, since I was more concerned about the case of Mrs. Chalmers’ murder, but I let Lulu rhapsodize. Although this is kind of embarrassing to admit, I think one of the main reasons I wanted to buy the Nash home was so that I could continue taking Angels Flight down to Broadway every day. But that sounds so trivial a reason to buy a house that every time I thought it, I was ashamed of myself. Imagine buying a house because of a tiny railroad line! I’d bet money, if I ever bet on anything, that poor people didn’t use inane reasoning like that when they set about to buy houses. Anyhow, I didn’t divulge my reason to Lulu, so I guess it doesn’t much matter.
I also couldn’t use the excuse that I needed to keep my job and that’s why I wanted to buy the house, because I didn’t really need my job. I didn’t tell Lulu that, either. Besides, she already knew it.
“Oh, boy, it would be fun to have a friend to go to work with every day,” said Lulu.
“I think so, too.”
“I wonder if Mr. and Mrs. Buck would like the idea.”
“I don’t know, but I do know there’s a lovely apartment off the kitchen that has a bedroom and a bathroom and a sitting room. Do you know if they have any children?”
Lulu shrugged. “I think Mr. Buck told me about a daughter going to school back east somewhere. I think I heard him talk about a son, too, but I’m not sure.”
“Hmm. I wonder what school she goes to that it has to be back east. There are lots of schools around here.” I wiped mustard and sauerkraut on a napkin and wished my spite hadn’t been quite so great, since the napkin was small and the mess was largish.
“Well,” said Lulu. “She’s going to college, and there aren’t a whole lot of colleges that take Negro students. Especially girl Negro students. I suspect they found one in the south somewhere. Mr. Buck says she wants to be a teacher.”
It was my turn to gape mutely at someone. Don’t ask me why, but it had never once occurred to me that colleges might not accept students because of their race. That didn’t seem fair to me. “But . . .”
“Face it, Mercy. You’ve lived in heaven all your life. This is the real world. Mr. Buck is a nice man, but he’s a Negro, and his kids are Negroes, and there’s nothing you or me or him or anyone else can do about it.”
“But . . .”
“Would you want your kids to go to school with his kids?”
Her question stunned me. I thought it over. Presuming I ever had children, would it bother me if they were in classes with students of other races?
Oh, dear. I didn’t like it that I was thinking what I was thinking.
Lulu smirked at me. “See?” She, not having had my type of manners shoved down her throat from birth, licked the mustard from her own fingers. “Personally, I think Mr. Buck is a heck of an improvement over that Ned creature who used to kill women, and I also think he’s smarter than Ned ever was. But he’s still not white. And that, Mercy Allcutt, is the only thing that matters, when push comes to shove.”
“Good heavens,” I whispered, feeling depressed and defeated. Then it occurred to me to wonder if Sister Adelaide Burkhard Emmanuel would allow Negroes into her Angelica Gospel Hall. I hadn’t seen a single one there that first week I’d gone. Did God judge people by their color, too?
I didn’t believe it.
“When did the Civil War end?” I asked, still feeling kind of faint.
“How the heck should I know? I was never any good at history.”
“Eighteen sixty-five, I believe. And the Emancipation Proclamation was passed a couple of years before that.”
“What’s the Emancipation Proclamation?” Lulu didn’t sound as if she much cared.
“It was the proclamation freeing the slaves.” But it hadn’t freed all of them. I remember being shocked when I’d learned that.
Bother. My heart gave a big twist. In that moment I wished . . . But I didn’t have the time, money, or energy to save the entire world from its follies. My purpose in life at this moment was to clear Ernie of murder charges. Therefore, I attempted with my whole self to shove the question of prejudice and unfairness out of my mind and concentrate on the problem at hand.
I even gave myself a shake, as if by doing so, I could shake irrelevancies out of my head. If they were irrelevancies.
But no. Stop it, Mercy Allcutt, said I to myself. And I did. Stop it, I mean.
Therefore, I said to Lulu, “I’m going to be visiting a lady named Mrs. Pinkney this afternoon for tea. She was a friend of Mrs. Chalmers.”
“That’s the lady who was murdered, right?”
“Yes. Mrs. Chalmers was, not Mrs. Pinkney.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And I’m going to ask questions and see if I can discover anything with relevance to the case. Mr. Pinkney doesn’t like his wife’s involvement with the Angelica Gospel Hall. He even called Mr. Chalmers to see if he could get Mrs. Chalmers to stop inviting Mrs. Pinkney to go to church with her, and I’m wondering if he might be a suspect.”
“Gee, Mercy, be careful, okay?”
“Don’t worry, Lulu. I’ll be very careful.”
“Does Ernie know you’re doing this?”
“Um . . .” Did he? I thought over my morning and, although I could remember Ernie and even me shouting and swearing a good deal, I didn’t remember telling Ernie I was taking tea with Mrs. Pinkney. “I think I forgot to tell him. I was so mad at him by the time Phil Bigelow got there, I just stormed off.”
“Phil Bigelow,” said Lulu in a tone that left no doubt whatsoever what she thought of him. I didn’t blame her, Phil having once arrested her brother and all.
“Well, it doesn’t matter. If Ernie’s still in the office when we get back from lunch, I’ll tell him then.” I turned to look at Lulu and grinned. “Did I tell you he threatened to fire me if I didn’t stop investigating the Chalmers case?”
Lulu gasped. “No! He didn’t!”
“He did. So I told him to go right ahead. That would leave me all day, every day, to investigate the case.”
I was glad when Lulu laughed, because her amusement did something to brighten my thus-far gloomy day.
By the time we got back to the office, Ernie had left it again. With the police. My heart crunched when I read the note he’d placed on my desk: Gone with Phil and O’Reilly to the station. Stay out of trouble.
I didn’t mind the stay out of trouble part, because I’d become accustomed to Ernie telling me stuff like that. It was the going to the station with Phil and O’Reilly part that bothered me. A lot. Why had he gone to the station again? Had Phil made him go? Had O’Reilly? Had Ernie decided to go on his own for some reason beyond my understanding? Since he never divulged anything of importance to me, I had not a clue in the world about anything at all.
However, that was a situation I intended to change that very afternoon by deft inquisition of Mrs. Pinkney, and even her husband if he was there at home with her.
The Pinkneys didn’t live in as grand a neighborhood as the Chalmerses, but on a neat little street with a bit of charm called Hoover. I decided not to have the cabbie wait for me, since I didn’t anticipate any trouble from Mrs. Pinkney, a woman I’d pegged as rather meek. Not that my judgment when it came to people had proved correct one hundred percent of the time in the past, but I still didn’t believe Mrs. Pinkney a deranged murderer. Of course, her husband might be a different matter entirely, but he was probably at work somewhere, so I still told the cabbie not to
wait.
Before I even got to the front door, Mrs. Pinkney had opened it and stood there, a beaming smile on her face, as if my visit was one of the most looked-forward-to events in her life. She wore a pretty, pink flowered day dress and looked as if she’d dressed especially well for my visit, which touched me. I figured she probably didn’t get out much. My heart twanged again when I realized her not getting out much probably had a good deal to do with her best friend’s death.
“I’m so glad you could come over today, Miss Allcutt,” she said, grasping my hand and all but tugging me into her house. “Since Persephone’s death, I’ve been so lonely. And I did so want to tell someone of my discovery.”
And darned if she didn’t start crying. I swear. This woman cried or fainted at the drop of a hat—or the drop-in of a guest.
“Please, Mrs. Pinkney,” I said in my most sugary voice, “please don’t weep. Remember that Sister Chalmers is in a better place now. And you’ll see her again one day. Don’t forget that.” Until Ernie Templeton hired me as his secretary, I hadn’t understood the true meaning of a detective’s job. So far, for me, it had been mainly acting, yet one more form of employment my parents would deplore.
She hauled out a hankie and mopped her eyes. “Yes, yes. You’re right. I know that. But I still miss her so much.”
“It’s those of us who are left behind who hurt, I know. But you can take heart from knowing that Mrs. Chalmers is singing in the heavenly choir now.”
I could hardly believe those words had come out of my mouth. Still, I felt sorry for Mrs. Pinkney, and my insipid comments seemed to be giving some comfort to my hostess, so I didn’t worry too much about them.
“You’re right. And Persephone was such a cheerful, optimistic person. She always looked on the bright side. She’d hate it that I grieve so for her.”
Boy, doesn’t that just show you that perception is everything in this world? The Persephone Chalmers I’d met had been virtually insubstantial, with her wafting ways and tiny, breathy voice. Yet one of her best friends had known her as a cheerful and optimistic person. You just never know, do you?
