“Exactly. He might have said to himself that if he couldn’t have her, then nobody could!”
“A very interesting hypothesis,” Miss Withers told him. “You’re quite a psychologist, Mr. Zotos. One can see that you’ve been giving this a good deal of thought.”
“I’ve been lying awake nights—” he began, and then stopped. It was evident that Zotos, having shot his bolt, considered the interview over. He edged away. “You’ll call me, of course, if there’s anything else I can do?”
“Naturally. But one point occurs to me at the moment. When the committee got this anonymous letter, why didn’t they—”
“But it wasn’t!” he interrupted. “It was signed Virla Bruner!”
The Withers eyebrows went up. “Well! How extremely interesting.” She nodded. “I’m very grateful for this information. So will be Mrs. Rowan when I tell her—and Andy too, if it helps save his neck.”
Zotos smiled a smile that was almost a snarl, licking his soft pinkish lips. “Don’t misunderstand me, ma’am. I don’t shed any tears over Rowan. He deserves everything he gets for what he did to Midge, even if he didn’t actually kill her. But if it was somebody else, and I can help in any way to send him where he belongs—”
“What a bloodthirsty little man it is!” observed Miss Withers thoughtfully a few moments later, as she presented Talleyrand with his long overdue dinner. “He’d actually like to see everyone boiled in oil who ever touched the hem of Midge Harrington’s garment, and then go dance a jig on their graves.”
Talley wagged his stub of a tail furiously, but went on with the serious business at hand. He was very fond of his mistress, but sometimes he thought she talked a good deal, an attitude shared by most of her friends and associates.
“But if Mr. Zotos’ information is correct, and it has the ring of truth about it, then the bottom falls out of the police case against Andy Rowan! The Harrington girl could hardly have been after him to get a divorce and marry her if she was already married herself.”
Talley banged his dish around the linoleum, hinting at seconds. But Miss Withers, who had already begun to dial a number on the telephone, had changed her mind again and was putting on her coat. “Good news,” she said, “is something that should be delivered in person.”
“There are masked words abroad, I say, which nobody understands …”
—John Ruskin
8.
THERE WAS A MULTITUDE of things that Natalie Rowan ought to be doing. Yet here she sat in her living room, helplessly listening to a man from the insurance company. He had a soft voice and a sympathetic smile; he was red-faced and gray-haired and reminded her a little of her own dead father, but his eyes looked like cold boiled onions. She already had a headache, and wished with all her heart that he would finish and go away.
But there he sat, like Patience on a monument, glued to her sofa. “Really, Mr. Brownell, I’ll have to think it over,” she said uncertainly.
“Except, my dear lady, you forget the time element?” His cough was delicate.
“I know.” Her eyes clouded. “The week of the twentieth.”
“Precisely.” Mr. Brownell referred to a sheaf of papers. “Your husband Andrew Bryce Rowan has had a straight life policy, face value $20,000, with our company since 1939. It is still in force, because you yourself have been making the quarterly payments during the past year …”
“But naturally. Why wouldn’t I? I’m the beneficiary.”
“That is correct. Now the cash surrender value of the policy, as of today, is a little over $8500. If the insured wished, he could borrow that amount against it. Now, Mrs. Rowan, business is business. Ours is a small mutual company, and I admit that we are not anxious to assume any avoidable losses. It has occurred to our board of directors that perhaps in your present predicament you might be in need of immediate funds for the purpose of preparing an appeal, arranging petitions for clemency, or whatever. Therefore I am empowered to offer you, as beneficiary, a flat settlement of three-fourths the face value, or $15,000.” Mr. Brownell removed a signed, color-perforated check from his outsized wallet, and studied it complacently. “Do you have your husband’s policy here at hand?”
“Why yes, but I still don’t see—” quavered Natalie. “Why should I accept $15,000 today when perhaps next week—?” She shuddered. “This is horrible.”
“Think of your own best interests, Mrs. Rowan,” said the insurance man calmly. “I’ll explain it again. We are gambling—I should say we are taking a planned risk. If we settle the claim in advance, there is always the possibility of a reprieve, or a commutation of sentence to life imprisonment. If you do not accept settlement, your husband may live out his life expectancy in prison with you having to keep up the payments all those years …”
Then the doorbell rang.
“It’s only more reporters,” sighed Natalie. “I have no more privacy than a goldfinch. I won’t answer it, I never do when I’m alone unless somebody has called first to make an appointment the way you did.”
But the doorbell kept ringing, as insistent as a yapping terrier.
“They’ll get tired and go away,” said Natalie hopefully. But whoever it was didn’t get tired, and didn’t go away. Finally she excused herself, tiptoeing into the dining room to open a tiny crack in the drawn Venetian blind.
“Miss Withers!” she cried, and ran to fling open the front door. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re here! Iris has let me down, she hasn’t been here all day. But there’s a man from the insurance company about Andy’s policy, and he wants me to sign something.”
“Read the fine print first,” advised the schoolteacher. In the living room she listened to it all, her eyebrows going higher and higher.
“Now, Miss Withers,” the man continued affably, “as a friend of Mrs. Rowan you will see the obvious values in her accepting our offer of settlement. She is immediately assured of three-fourths the face value of the policy.”
“Just a minute,” interrupted the schoolteacher. “Mr. Brownell, just what position do you hold with the insurance company?”
“Why, I’m a trouble-shooter, sort of an investigator. Our company covers all types of policies—fire and theft, accident, personal liability and so on. Now and then something comes up—”
“It does indeed. And you want to save the company $5000, is that it?”
“Why yes, in a way. As I told Mrs. Rowan, we are running the risk of a reprieve or commutation, which would mean that we had settled the claim prematurely. Of course, the life expectancy of a man in prison is considerably less than the averages that appear on actuarial tables. It seemed to us a fair deal all around—Mrs. Rowan has immediate tax-free funds to finance last-minute attempts to save her husband, and the company—”
“The company my sainted aunt!” Miss Withers sniffed a stupendous sniff, and her keen blue-gray eyes fixed Mr. Brownell as if he were some large strange bug on a pin. “Is it your regular policy to offer this sort of settlement in such cases?”
“As I said before, ours is a small mutual company. None of our policyholders has ever been executed for murder until now.” He looked rather uncomfortable.
“Nobody’s executed until it happens,” the schoolteacher pointed out crisply. “And this hasn’t happened and isn’t going to.”
Natalie looked noticeably brighter at the firm reassurance. But Mr. Brownell shook his head. “I have talked to the police, and I hear that the Governor has let it be known that he does not plan—”
“Governors can change their minds, and policemen too.” The schoolteacher turned. “Mrs. Rowan, are you asking my advice about this?”
“Why, yes. But I wasn’t going to sign!” Natalie said hastily. “I don’t really need the money.”
Brownell’s face took on a blank expression. It was evident that never in his life had he come into contact with anybody who didn’t need money, and admitted it. “In that case—” he said stiffly, and rose to go.
“Just a minute,” put in Miss
Withers. “I’m beginning to see what this is all about. May I ask you, sir, what started this whole thing?”
He hesitated, and then smiled—all but the boiled-onion eyes. “I don’t quite understand.”
“What inspired this desperate attempt to get Mrs. Rowan to accept a settlement? You haven’t heard anything, have you?” She nodded. “I can see that you have.”
“It was only the letter,” admitted Mr. Brownell, somewhat nettled. “The letter from Rowan, asking to change the beneficiary of his policy. But of course we can’t do that without Mrs. Rowan’s permission; clause 17 of our policy states very clearly that there can be no change of beneficiary when said beneficiary has made payments on behalf of the insured, as Mrs. Rowan has been doing.”
“This gets clearer and clearer,” said the schoolteacher, with a sidewise glance at Natalie. “I won’t waste time asking who it was that Rowan wanted as his new beneficiary, because I can guess. He probably also made a formal request that the recipient utilize the money to clear his name of the stigma of murder, even though it would have to be done posthumously.”
“Why, er—I believe there was something of the sort, yes.”
“I knew it! Mrs. Rowan, you’re very wise not to accept that check!”
The insurance man didn’t say anything. He was very silent, and it was one of the most profane silences that Miss Withers had ever heard.
“But go ahead,” said the schoolteacher to Natalie, “and give your permission to have the beneficiary changed as your husband requests. Because if anything in the world could build a fire under Inspector Oscar Piper, that would. When he learns that in addition to being Andy’s heir he is also beneficiary of his insurance—”
“One moment, madam,” interrupted the insurance man. “You seem to be laboring under a certain misapprehension. Andrew Rowan in his letter did not mention the name of any Inspector Piper at all.”
“He didn’t? Then who on earth—?”
“You, madam!” said Mr. Brownell coldly, and for once had the last word.
When he was gone the two women stared at each other. “Wouldn’t you like a drink or something?” Natalie asked finally.
“Tea,” said Miss Withers. “Double strength.”
“It’s only that Andy’s heard what you’re trying to do in his behalf,” her hostess said a few minutes later. “And if you don’t succeed in saving him, he still wants you to continue the job after he’s gone.”
“The poor man can’t have much confidence, if all he hopes for is posthumous vindication. Is he really so resigned to his fate, then?”
“Not Andy,” said Natalie Rowan proudly. “He was quite cheerful when I saw him. And I was talking with that Mr. Huff last week, who works up at the prison, and he said Andy was taking it unusually well.”
Miss Withers stirred her tea. “Huff? Oh yes, the keeper who threw me out.”
“But he was only trying to protect Andy from what he thought was a newspaper reporter. Mr. Huff thinks Andy is really innocent, he as much as told me so.”
“Indeed? And why?”
“Mr. Huff said that other men in the condemned row give their personal possessions when it gets toward the time; a musical instrument promised to one man, books and trinkets to another, and so on. But Andy hasn’t given anything away—” Natalie stopped suddenly and crossed her fingers. “Heaven grant that he doesn’t have to.”
“Amen to that,” agreed the schoolteacher. “But what I came up to tell you—”
“Is it the police?” Natalie interrupted hopefully. “Have they found anything? Are they beginning to realize that the same person killed both those girls?”
“No,” admitted Miss Withers flatly. “The Inspector has a new theory, a little on the fantastic side—”
“He doesn’t suspect me, does he? Because I don’t have any alibi for that night except going to the movies, and everybody knows I’d do almost anything in the world to save Andy now that I know he’s innocent …”
“Innocent people usually don’t have very good alibis, if any.” Miss Withers was a little amused. “And if you had gone to such desperate lengths as committing murder to help your husband, you wouldn’t have used a crystal ball as a weapon.”
“It should have been a necklace,” agreed Natalie. “If only the murderer had used the same weapon this time, so even the police could see the connection—”
“The police! Inspector Piper has leaped on a horse and galloped off in all the wrong directions. His current theory—” And she told about Banana-Nose Wilson.
The woman slumped in her chair, for once looking her age. “Sometimes it all seems so hopeless,” she moaned. “You don’t know what a day I’ve had. People hammering on the door, and no little Iris to shoo them away. First there was the man from Campbell’s mortuary who wanted to talk to me about arrangements for bringing—for bringing Andy’s body back, and whether there’d be a funeral or what.” She dabbed at her eyes with a bit of lace. “I told him that if there was any funeral there’d be a double one, and I mean it. Then a nasty young man from some true official detective magazine wanted to take a picture of this living room as the scene of the murder, to illustrate some story he’s written that’s to run in the magazine as soon as Andy is officially executed, and then—”
“However difficult your day, I imagine it had nothing on your husband’s,” cut in Miss Withers tartly. “But cheer up, I have good news, or what may turn out to be so. I’ve been stirring up our suspects a bit.” She gave a brief account of her prowling at the Duke Hotel, and of how Mr. Zotos had popped up with a new lead.
“The Harrington girl married?” gasped Natalie.
“Making four suspects instead of three, if we can only locate him. On top of that, I think I know how the murderer of Midge Harrington managed to get into the apartment house to murder Marika, and—”
The doorbell rang again. “I should have a maid,” Natalie admitted. “But I can’t stand anybody bustling around. If Iris were only here—”
“I’m afraid that Iris Dunn has stood not upon the order of her going, but gone. Carried away in an expensive imported chariot by a weedy knight known as Bill. But I’ll promise you that I’ll locate her when and if we need her. Meanwhile, suppose I see what I can do in the role of Cerberus.” She marched out to the front door, and opened it.
“Stop leaning on that bell!” she said firmly. “Mrs. Rowan isn’t—” Then she stopped. Standing out on the step, resplendent in silver fox, was an extremely beautiful, though plumpish redhead; a tall proud girl who managed to look angry, scared, and appealing all at the same time.
“I’m Chloris Klee,” she said quickly. “May I please come in? It’s important.”
“Why, you’re Mrs. Riff Sprott, I remember!”
“Mrs. Walden Sprott,” corrected the girl. “Riff is just a sort of nickname. Only I use my professional name, mostly.” She came into the house, obviously stiffening her spine for the ordeal. “I remember you too,” said Chloris. “You’re the one who tried to make with the jive talk, and then tipped Riff off that the heat was on. Only I didn’t expect you’d be here.”
“You want to see Mrs. Rowan—on behalf of your husband, I suppose? Why did he send you?”
“But he didn’t! He mustn’t ever know!” whispered the girl as she followed Miss Withers into the living room. Natalie Rowan, who had prudently retreated into the rear of the house, came back into the room and was introduced.
But Chloris refused a cup of tea, a drink, and even a chair. “What I’ve got to say won’t take a minute, and I have a show to do. I came up here, Mrs. Rowan, to beg you to use your influence to make the police let my husband alone.”
“Oh?” said Natalie blankly. “My influence?”
“He’s almost out of his mind with this persecution! His lip is gone, his timing is way off, and tonight he even had to get a substitute to play his horn. The management of The Grotto is about ready to tear up the contract and throw us all out into the street. Can you im
agine what it’s like to have detectives following you everywhere you go, peering in through the door when you stop in a cafeteria for a bite, standing outside your hotel all night and looking up at the window?”
Natalie Rowan slowly shook her head.
“Riff can’t eat, he can’t sleep, he can’t even drink! Look, Mrs. Rowan, I know you’re behind all this—reopening the Harrington case and all the rest of it. You’ve got money, and you’re needling the police. You’re doing it for your man—you love him a lot, don’t you?”
“Yes,” said the woman softly. “If he dies, I die too. That sounds fancy, but it’s the truth.”
“Then maybe you know how I’ve felt about Riff since the first day I met him, and that was almost three years ago! Maybe your husband didn’t kill that big Harrington witch, and if he did for my money he ought to get a medal.” Chloris shrugged her well-rounded shoulders. “But even if he didn’t kill her—get this! My husband didn’t either!”
“One moment—” put in Miss Withers.
“Oh, I suppose the police have found out about the alibi!” Chloris smiled scornfully. “I suppose they finally worked on one of the boys in the band and got him to break down and admit that Riff didn’t spend the evening of the murder with them at a jam session up in Harlem like they swore they did. Swing musicians always stick together; they have no special love for the law, and the boys thought they were doing Riff a favor by saying he was along. Only he wasn’t—I can see you already know that. But there’s one thing you don’t know—”
“Several things, but we’re finding out fast,” said Miss Withers under her breath.
“Riff was home in our hotel suite that night!” the girl concluded defiantly. “I know it.”
“And just how do you know it?”
“Okay, I’ll give it to you straight, since it’s just among us girls. The combo didn’t have any bookings that week, all of August was lousay that summer. We were strictly from hunger, and things got so bad that I went back to doing dinners.”
“You, a cook?” The schoolteacher’s eyebrows went up again.
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