But all this wasn’t getting her anywhere. There was one last resort. She picked up the phone and asked the operator to connect her with Spring 7-3100. “In New York City,” she hastily added, and sat down to wait.
Three thousand miles away a wiry, grizzled little Irishman spoke a weary “Hello” into the phone.
“I’m delighted to find you at your office, Oscar!” came the voice of Hildegarde Withers.
“I’m not at my office,” he told her. “I’m home and supposed to be asleep. But some fool down at headquarters relayed your call. What in heaven’s name are you up to now?” He yawned noisily.
“Listen carefully,” she cried across the miles of wire. “Have you got a pencil?”
“Hildegarde! I know that old gag. I say, ‘Yes,’ and then you say, ‘Well—”
“This is no gag. Oscar, I want you to have one of your men look through the files down at headquarters and see if there’s ever been a homicide case where the victim’s neck was broken without any marks and without any noise. If you find one, for heaven’s sake, wire me how it was done.”
Inspector Oscar Piper scratched his hairy chest through the gap in the front of his rumpled pajamas. Then he reached for the dead cigar that lay in the ash tray on his bed table.
“Oscar? Are you going back to sleep?”
“I’m thinking. Wait a minute, will you? About eight years ago, maybe nine. Berry … Ferry … Ferris … Harris—that’s it. Emily Harris.”
“She killed somebody that way?”
“No, Hildegarde. The Harris dame was a fat blonde living down in Greenwich Village. In those days the village was something. Artists and musicians and old maids of both sexes, well steeped in gin. Anyway, the Harris gal was found early one morning by the milkman or the paper boy or somebody, lying in a soft flower bed with her neck broken. It was only about five feet below her bedroom window.”
“But how was it done?”
“There you got me,” the inspector was forced to confess. “The fall didn’t seem hardly enough to snap her neck, so the case is still in our ‘Open’ file. There was a drunken brawl in her studio that night, and all that the other guests could tell us was that she had complained of a headache and gone to bed. We held her boy friend for a day or two but we had to let him go for lack of evidence.”
Miss Withers almost forgot to breathe. “Oscar, what was the boy friend’s name?”
“Oh—Demarest or Levy or something. Why? He was a phony poet, a skinny guy with a beard.”
“The name couldn’t have been Laval, could it?”
“That’s right! Then you did remember the case after all! It was Derek Laval.” The inspector pushed his cigar to the far corner of his mouth. “Hello? Hello, Hildegarde?” He rattled the receiver against the hook. “Hello! Operator, on that call from Hollywood you cut me off!”
III
Death is an angel with two faces:
to us HE TURNS A FACE OF TERROR,
Blighting all things fair….
THEODORE C. WILLIAMS
“I SAID NIX ON Myrna Loy,” roared Mr Thorwald L. Nincom into the telephone. “Sam, I don’t care a hoot what Metro is willing to trade her for. She can’t play Lizzie Borden. Maybe five years ago, before they sweetened her up into the perfect wife for Nick Charles, but not now. Nor Dunne either. The fans won’t take it.”
He listened for a moment, riffling through the stack of unopened morning mail on his desk. “Who? Darnell? Of course Linda is cute as a bug but she’s too damn starry eyed. No, I’ve sent for Gaynor, and we’re going to take some tests. And then I’m off for Arrowhead until the end of the week. Oh, look, Sam—one more thing. You might drop the word to stenographic that Miss Madison, Miss Jill Madison, would be happier in some other line of work outside the studio. She was my secretary up to yesterday but she’s got no sense of loyalty. You’d think she was doing you a favor by working for you. I’ve been a father to the girl, and what did I get for it?”
Sam Lothian, executive vice-president of Mammoth, hung up the phone with a smile, having heard through the studio grapevine exactly what Mr Nincom had got for it. He made a note on his desk pad: “Tell Louie B. no dice on Loy” and, beneath it, “Ax for Madison.”
Then he pressed a buzzer and said, “Send Miss Withers in. And get Sansom over here.”
He leaned back in his chair, the perfect picture of a banker about to refuse a loan, a bald, plump, prosperous banker in an unprosperous community. Or so Miss Hildegarde Withers decided when she was ushered into his august presence.
“I suppose, Miss Withers,” he began pleasantly, “you are wondering why I asked you to come over to my office first thing this morning, eh?”
“Not at all,” returned that lady. “You are about to tell me to mind my own business.”
Sam Lothian gulped. “Er-r-r, yes. I mean—well, I understand that criminology is an avocation of yours. You’ve made rather a hobby of homicide.”
“I have. And I can smell murder a mile away.”
“Sometimes, perhaps, when it isn’t there. The way some overzealous doctors always rip out your tonsils or your appendix just because they like to operate?”
The schoolteacher failed to see any connection. “Murder is murder, and it can’t be hushed up.”
“The trouble with a hobby,” said Lothian with a pained look, “is that we all have a tendency—” He looked up. “Oh, come in, Tom. You know Chief Sansom, don’t you, Miss Withers? I was just saying that the trouble with a hobby is that we all have a tendency to ride it too much. You, Miss Withers, have a hunch that a member of our writing staff did not die an accidental death last night, a hunch as yet unsupported by evidence. By the way, have you talked to any newspapermen?”
She shook her head, and the tension in the office lessened a fraction. Lothian looked at Chief Sansom who was teetering on the edge of his chair and nodded.
“Really, there can be no question of hushing anything up,” he continued. “A full report of the accident was made to the police last night. I have here”—and he picked up a sheet of paper—“I have a copy of the preliminary post-mortem report which is being filed by Doctor John Panzer, chief coroner of the city of Los Angeles. He says: ‘I have made a complete examination of the cadaver of Saul Stafford at Lumsden Mortuary Haven, 1243 Western Avenue. Results as follows: Anterior surface of body—negative.’ That means no bruises. ‘Abdominal cavity—negative to all poisons except ethyl alcohol. Cranial cavity—negative except to ethyl alcohol, concentration of 0.184.’ That means he was moderately tight. ‘Skeletal structure—a fracture dislocation of the second cervical vertebra and lesion of the spinal cord. Conclusion: Death from brain coma and/or lung asphyxia caused by break in spinal cord, either of which alone would be sufficient to cause death. There are no evidences of violence or of suicidal intent. All symptoms listed are entirely compatible with the theory of death by misadventure.’ So you see, Miss Withers—”
“Stafford was about two thirds swacked and he fell offen a chair and busted his neck,” Sansom put in heavily.
“I’m telling you this, Miss Withers, because we want you to be perfectly satisfied,” Lothian continued. “Doctor Panzer is an experienced and conscientious man.” He rose to his feet. “And I might also point out to you that in the forty-some years since the motion-picture industry moved to California there has been no major crime committed inside the walls of any studio!”
“There’s a first time for everything,” said the schoolteacher doggedly. But she was on the spot and knew it. “Of course,” she reminded them, “there is the fact that I had a talk with Stafford before he died and he told me he was afraid of being murdered….”
“A coincidence,” Lothian told her. “If he wasn’t pulling your leg. The man had a mania for playing practical jokes and ribbing people, you know.”
“But death had the last laugh,” pointed out Miss Withers tartly, and made her exit.
If the front-office nabobs had a tendency to take the demise of Saul St
afford somewhat lightly, it was not a feeling shared on the third floor of Writers’ where very little work was in progress that morning. In Gertrude’s office there was a gathering of the secretaries, Lillian and fat Clara and one or two others, all talking a blue streak and reading the morning papers.
The Stafford story was on page nineteen of the Times whose modest one-column head was “ACCIDENT FATAL TO SCENARIST.” Even the Examiner went no further than “DEATH DRAWS CURTAIN ON PLAYBOY WRITER’S MADCAP LIFE.” Both papers discreetly omitted the name Mammoth, saying only “a major studio.”
“Take it easy, Lil,” Gertrude said. “They didn’t even mention your name.”
“There are a lot of things that didn’t get into the paper,” Lillian said sharply.
“And that won’t, dearie,” Gertrude interposed. She looked up as the elevator door clanged and Miss Hildegarde Withers came up to the window. Then she carefully wrote down “10:35 A.M.—Withers in.”
“Good morning,” greeted the schoolteacher. “By the way, do you keep a record like that for everyone?”
Gertrude nodded. “It’s a sort of studio rule. Not so much to check up on the hours people keep and how many callers they have as it is to have a record of where all writers are—in case the producer or supervisor wants to get in touch with them.”
“You don’t throw the sheets away, do you?” Miss Withers pressed on. “I was thinking particularly of yesterday afternoon.” She suddenly lowered her voice, realizing that the secretaries were listening so hard that you could almost feel it. “Could I see that record?”
“I’m very sorry, Miss Withers, but—”
“It isn’t just idle curiosity,” insisted the schoolteacher. “It struck me that no one can come out of the elevator without being seen from where you sit. Nor can anyone come up the stairs and pass to any one of the offices in this wing. In other words, you have a complete check on everything.”
“I’m sorry, but it’s against the studio rules,” Gertrude announced. “Besides, I’ve turned in the report to Mr Lothian.”
“Thank you just the same,” said Miss Withers, and started down the hall. The way lay clear before her with two approaches to the problem. She could, of course, attack it through the usual door of “who?” Who had opportunity, who had motive, who had the type of mind that would incline toward murder as the answer to an emotional impasse? Or she could come at it backwards through the personality of the victim.
She went into her own office, removed the top-heavy hat which was her trademark and placed it beside her umbrella. Then she crossed over to the connecting door. As she turned the knob the schoolteacher took a deep breath, steeling herself against what she was about to face. After all, the glorified junk shop was something of a shock to any sensitive nature. The dive into a dime museum, into a magpie’s nest of small, bright objects, was not a thing to be taken lightly. But it was the back door to Stafford’s mind, the way to an understanding of what he had been and why he met the end he did.
She came through the door, stopped short and for as long as one might have counted ten she stood, stiff and unbelieving. Then she reached for the telephone. “What’s happened to this office?”
Gertrude finally understood. “Oh, the janitor always straightens up when a writer leaves. Everything personal was packed up last night.”
Completely disconsolate, Miss Hildegarde Withers looked upon an office as neat and impersonal as a blank sheet of paper. Gone were the posters, gone the gadgets, gone the magpie’s nest. And gone the clues, gone with the wind.
There was nothing, absolutely nothing, which carried any message for her. She looked all through the desk drawers, under and inside the blotting pad, everywhere. Once for a moment she thought that she had struck pay dirt, for on the margin of the desk blotter she found the scribbled notation, “Laval—Ox 7003.” Eagerly she picked up the phone and asked to have the number dialed for her, but the ringing at the other end of the line was a curious double buzz, and the exchange operator finally cut in to say that Oxford 7003 had been discontinued.
Finally she abandoned the search and went back to her own office where she stared glumly at her desk and waited for a hunch. None came, but she had an interruption in the shape of Buster who entered, bearing a large sealed envelope with red “Important” stickers all over it.
“From Mr Nincom’s office,” he announced. “Say, Miss Withers, is it true what they’re saying? That you’re a detective and—?”
“I wonder,” she said glumly. “I wonder if I’m a detective or a—Never mind.” She shook her head. “By the way, how is the romance burgeoning? Did you follow my suggestion about dropping Confucius overboard?”
Buster’s shoulders sagged. “I didn’t have the chance. I mean, Jill is sort of out of reach right now. Confucius say, ‘Girl who think about money have no time for think about love.’”
“Oh yes, the sweepstake thing. Well, she’ll get over that.”
“Maybe,” he said doubtfully. “Maybe she’ll get over it too quick. Because the drawing for the Irish Sweep doesn’t take place for two weeks yet. So that cablegram from Dublin is a phony!”
“Does Jill Madison know that?”
He shrugged. “I’m not going to be the one to tell her!” And Buster departed. Miss Withers started to open the envelope.
After a few minutes she was interrupted by the telephone. It was her agent, the energetic Mr Wagman. “Just wanted to see if everything is okay,” he queried. “I meant to drop in on you, but this Stafford tragedy has complicated matters. He was my best client, you know. Him and Dobie.”
“Complicated?”
“Yeah. They had a contract as a team. Now there’s only one of them. I’m trying to get Dobie kept on alone. If it fails it’s for one reason. He’s got a reputation as a trouble maker.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. It doesn’t pay in this business to make trouble. Such as”—here Wagman’s voice dropped—“such as going around talking about murder and so on. You were hired for a different job, you know.” His tone was friendly enough, but there was somewhere a subtle threat.
“Thank you,” said Miss Withers gently, and hung up. Then she took up the sheaf of screen play which Nincom had sent her. She opened it, looked at the title, Miss Lizzie Borden, and at the long list of writers whose names had been set down as contributors. She read:
SEQUENCE “A”
Fade in:
Exterior Borden mansion—Full shot (Day)
A-1 A big white mansion with white pillars, many porticoes, etc. In the b.g. is the Sound, with the masts of seven or eight of the Borden whaling fleet showing above the house. On the lawn are twelve or fifteen young people, all dressed in the costume of the Gay Nineties, playing a fast game of croquet. Foremost among them is LIZZIE BORDEN, young and lovely, the belle of the town. She suddenly turns and runs toward camera, laughing and following the ball. JOHN ELLIS follows her.
A-2 Closer shot—LIZZIE and ELLIS
He is a tall, gay young blade. (Gary Cooper type)
He raises his mallet to hit the ball.
LIZZIE (Frightened)
Oh no! Stop!
Camera pans down to close shot as Lizzie carefully brushes big blue butterfly from ball.
LIZZIE
(Reproachfully)
Ellis, you might have crushed it!
(To butterfly)
Go on, you lovely thing….
Miss Withers pushed the script away. “Go on yourself,” she muttered, remembering the town of Fall River as she knew it, remembering that narrow, proper little street on which stood the boxlike Borden house. Then there were the photographs of Lizzie herself, that tight-lipped, cold-blooded president of the Christian Endeavor Society. Belle of the town, indeed!
Miss Withers looked up suddenly to see that her door was being softly opened. Lillian entered on tiptoe, looking more lush and sultry than ever. Something had impelled her to wear black today, evidently out of respect for the dead, but the dress she had
chosen was of the slinky cocktail variety, giving an extremely gala effect.
“I only have a minute,” Lillian said. “Gertrude’s gone to lunch, and I asked to spell her at the board again today. Just so I could copy this list off for you. She was lying when she said she didn’t have it.”
And she handed Miss Withers a hastily scrawled record of the comings and goings of the floor for yesterday afternoon. The schoolteacher brightened considerably. “And nobody comes in or out of the hall without being checked?”
“Nobody,” Lillian said.
“Then if Stafford was murdered the murderer’s name should be on this list.”
“I—I guess so.” Lillian was in a hurry to get away.
Once alone, Miss Hildegarde Withers bent over the list. It didn’t matter what went on here before about three yesterday because that was the time when she had seen Stafford alive and reasonably well. That left approximately two hours.
Sometime in that hundred and twenty minutes Saul Stafford had died. According to the record, at three yesterday most of the writers of the floor had been in their offices. The only exceptions were Mr Virgil Dobie who was supposed to be out on the set watching the shooting of his latest picture and Mr Wilfred Josef who was supposed to be in Good Samaritan Hospital. She read:
P.M.
3:10—Mr Firsk in
3:18—Clara in for Mr Abend
3:40—Miss Withers phoned Mr Nincom
3:48—Mrs Firsk phoned in to Mr Josef (no message)
3:50—Mr Parlay Jones phoned Mr Dobie (call transf. Stage 4)
4:05—Mr Pape for Mr Abend
4:07—Mr August out (to hamburger stand)
4:12—Lillian in (to Mr Dobie’s office)
4:15—Mr Wagman in for Mr Firsk
4.17—Clara out
4:20—Clara in
4:25—Mr Wagman out
4:27—Mr August in
Puzzle of the Blue Banderilla Page 24
