“Oh, am I glad it’s you!” cried the woman. “And I hope you’re calling to say you’re packing a bag and coming up to stay with me. Because I just got another of those phone calls, and this time it didn’t seem silly—”
But the schoolteacher was not in the mood to hold anybody’s hand at the moment. “First things first,” she said crisply. “There’s something you can do to help. Now listen carefully …”
“I get it,” Natalie said finally. “I’m to call every county clerk in Jersey, eastern Pennsylvania, Long Island, lower New York and Connecticut to see if they issued a marriage license to Midge Harrington four years ago last April. But—”
“The man’s name was probably William something,” continued Miss Withers. “The wedding was on the day after Easter. Get going.”
“Why—why, of course. If you say so. Only I wish Iris were here, she’s so capable at that sort of thing.”
“Find Bill’s last name, so we can locate him, and I’ll wager dollars to doughnuts that we find Iris too. Good luck.” And the schoolteacher hung up.
Returning to the newspaper room, she turned to the more sensational New York dailies and plowed through endless columns of chaff in the form of Broadway gossip. Midge Harrington’s name cropped up only once or twice in a blue moon, usually in the sort of slick, contrived “news releases” that editors sometimes wink at for the sake of the accompanying leg art. Most of this had been part of Andy Rowan’s campaign, and the schoolteacher had seen much of it in Zotos’ scrapbooks.
All in all, Midge had made a rather small splash for such a big girl—until her death. Miss Withers even went through the newspaper stories of the murder and the ensuing trial, learning nothing new. The case had involved money and sex, but it lacked mystery; it had soon disappeared from the front pages.
Andy Rowan had been so obviously guilty, to everyone.
About to leave, the schoolteacher turned back to the earlier volumes again, sticking close to the theatrical pages. Finally she found something that made her perk up her ears—a half-column review by some assistant drama editor. It went:
VAUDEVILLE PROVES LIVELY CORPSE
Palace Drops Movie Revivals To Offer Frisky, Girlsome, Funny Variety Show
Lilly Morris, beloved English character songstress, and Flip Jayen, glib gagster and master of the barbed squelch, headline the revival of old-fashioned two-a-day at the Palace this week. Miss Morris, of course, is inimitable in her version of “Don’t ’Ave Any More, Mrs. Moore’ …
“I can imagine,” said Miss Withers, skipping a bit.
… Flip has a new act and a new cigar, both reminiscent of his old ones, but he is a master of timing and the dead-pan redhead against whom he bounces his slapstick has some of the best filled opera-lengths these weary eyes have seen in many a moon …
“That would be Iris, of course!” observed the schoolteacher, and was glared at by the man at the next table, who was deep in old Christian Science Monitors.
… Maxine and her all-girl orchestra. Cawthor the Great, magician, medium and mentalist, pulls rabbit out of ectoplasm and even materializes the ghost of a mermaid named Mary, who performs some eerie and baffling stunts of her own …
“But I thought all mermaids were named Minnie,” Miss Withers said, and was roundly shushed by her neighbor. She ignored him, and went on.
… Nudes Indigo, a dance act featuring three king-sized adorables known as The Three Glamazons in some voluptuous Orientale arrangements, fills in the rest of the show, together with Max and his trained dogs and …
So Iris had been telling the truth, at least about one thing. She had been on the same variety program with Midge Harrington, who must have been one of the dancers. Yes, on the opposite page was a photo of three girls wearing wispy scarves and seductive smiles—Midge in the middle, clearly recognizable in spite of the make-up.
Miss Withers began to gather up her pencils and notebook, but before she checked in the heavy-bound volumes she took one last look at the pictured face of Andy Rowan, caught in a candid shot in the courtroom. He looked like a sulky, defiant small boy, she thought. Scared, yes. Guilty, yes. But guilty of what? A man who had been foolish enough to try to dispose of an inconvenient dead body might very well look just like that.
On the whole, she had to admit, the old newspapers had been a let-down. The things one really wanted to know hardly ever got into print anyway, or if they did it was a matter of reading between the lines. Digging in the files was a little like a blind archeologist’s sifting the sands of the Sahara for neoliths.
Except that archaeologists had all the time in the world, and Andy Rowan’s sands were running out. Only two and a half more days—
She tried the telephone again, but the Rowan number was endlessly busy. Which meant that Natalie was faithfully doing her assigned job. At least, whether anything came of it or not, it would keep the woman busy and occupied.
As her nickel tinkled back into the slot, Miss Withers resisted a sudden impulse to use it to ring up the Inspector, just for old times’ sake. “I will not!” she told herself firmly. “No olive branches until he apologizes on bended knee for some of the things he said last night.” She hurried out of the library, grabbed a hasty salad and cup of tea in a little lunchroom around the corner and, thus fortified, took off again.
At a little after two o’clock that afternoon she was sighted entering a music store on upper Lexington, a musty labyrinth overflowing with ancient scores, sheet music and arrangements, battered old instruments, and tens of thousands of phonograph records, some of them antique wax cylinders which could only be played on the exhibition in the window.
It was a record collector’s paradise, offering everything from early Carusos to under-the-counter Billie Holliday numbers. Miss Withers reveled in such reminders of her happy childhood as No News, or What Killed the Dog, Cohen at the Telephone, A Hunt in the Black Forest, and Bert Williams’ immortal Can’t Do Nothing Till Martin Comes, but departed finally with only one purchase, a thin brittle hard-rubber disk which she carried as cautiously as she would a basket of eggs.
It would be premature, she told herself, to show any optimism yet. Besides, wasn’t it D. H. Lawrence who had said that the insane asylums were full of optimists? But her tide had very definitely turned.
That same tide, unfortunately, half an hour later left her high and dry in the first-floor salesroom of Tiffany’s—under arrest.
“Her reasoning is full of tricks And butterfly suggestions …”
—Alfred Cochrane
11.
THE INSPECTOR SAT SLUMPED DOWN at his battered oak desk, with a faraway look in his eye. Finally his unwilling visitor got tired of watching him doodling on his memo pad, drawing snakes curled on their own tails and linked like a chain. There was probably some Freudian significance to that, but she didn’t know what. “Well, Oscar,” she broke in, “say something, even if it’s only goodbye!”
More than ever this afternoon Miss Withers looked like a scandalized Buff Orpington hen, her feathers ruffled and a somewhat frantic gleam in her eye. As he still hesitated, she said, “I demand to know just why I was brought down here to Headquarters instead of being booked at the police station. I didn’t ask for any kid-glove treatment, I didn’t even say that I knew you. Besides, I could have beaten the rap, as you call it.”
“Could you now?” Piper asked gently, almost absently.
“Of course. Naturally I never had the slightest intention of stealing their old necklace, I just tested it a little when the salesman’s back was turned. But there was a store detective I didn’t know was watching me, and he leaped to conclusions. And then when they found all those other fragments of necklaces in my handbag, they thought the very worst.”
“Next time,” the Inspector told her, “don’t try to play games in a big Fifth Avenue jeweler’s, it’s like going into the U.S. Mint with a sack and a pistol. To answer your question, a plainclothesman happened to be outside, watching through the window. His
instructions didn’t cover a thing like that, but he used his own discretion, heading off the precinct boys and bringing you down here.” He looked at the typed report in front of him. “All in all you seem to have had a busy day.”
“Oscar!” she gasped. “You didn’t have me shadowed, you wouldn’t dare!”
“Maybe I did it for your own protection,” the Inspector said. “And my own. So I could be prepared if you got ready to pull any more surprises like the one last night.” He shook his head slowly. “Hildegarde, I hate to say this. But anybody reading this surveillance report would swear that you haven’t got all your marbles.”
She bridled. “I beg your pardon? If you’re trying to cast reflections on my sanity, what’s so psychopathic about looking things up in the public library?”
“But what things! Books on rare orchids and the theory of sound and how doggies hear and the etymology of laughter.”
“All pertinent to the investigation,” she said firmly. “I wanted to find out if white orchids were rare enough so there would be any chance at this late date of tracing the man who sent them to Midge Harrington on the day after Easter, which was obviously some sort of anniversary because she cried over them but only wore them to bed. I discovered that they’re expensive, but not that rare. A blind alley. Then I started out to try to find something on those queer phone calls that Iris and Natalie and I all received, that crazy jeering laughter. Talley howled when he heard it, which gave me something to start on. I found that dogs’ sensitive ears are actually pained when they hear certain sound vibrations inaudible to us. But those higher vibrations aren’t usually made by any human throat, Oscar!”
“I see,” he said. “Now it’s the Case of the Laughing Robot.” But he was still far away. The man had something on his mind, giving her only half his attention. “Then,” he continued, “you went cruising down Broadway, buying junk necklaces and telling the salesgirls you were going to use them as trade goods for the natives.”
“The girl was impertinent, and I got even with her by saying the first fantastic thing that came into my head! I didn’t know I was being spied upon!”
“Then you hightailed it over to a branch library, and talked out loud to yourself while you dug in the old newspaper files, right?”
“That’s almost slanderous! I was only trying to find out something new about the Harrington girl’s background, her career in show business and everything. Perhaps I did exclaim a little once or twice when I ran into something that surprised me—I was concentrating so hard I forgot where I was. It could happen to anybody.”
“Nothing that happens to you could happen to anybody else,” Piper told her. “Then, according to the report, you went up town to a secondhand shop and prowled around the old phonograph records until you found a little number called The Clock Store, issued in 1911. You bought it for $4.50, started for home, and then changed your mind and took a taxi down to Tiffany’s, where you represented yourself as a customer and then tried to wreck a $30,000 string of matched emeralds.”
“I had my reasons, Oscar. ‘I am but mad north-north-west.’ But it all does sound very deadly the way you put it. Your spies don’t miss much, do they? Except perhaps what I had for lunch.”
“Chicken salad and tea,” he said. “You also made a phone call to a Lackawanna number.”
“Yes, to Natalie Rowan. I set her to calling every county clerk within two hundred miles of New York to try and find out the name of the young man Midge Harrington married four and a half years ago, so he could take his rightful place with the other suspects.” Miss Withers smiled with modest triumph. “There’s something you didn’t know!”
The Inspector went back to his doodling. “Relax, Hildegarde. What do you think the police are, nincompoops? We knew about the marriage the day after the girl was murdered, but it was more than three years in the past. When Midge was hardly more than fifteen she eloped with a college boy to Rock Creek, Maryland, which is a sort of Gretna Green, and went through a ceremony with both of them giving false names and ages. His family found out about it and had it annulled a few days later. Rich Philadelphia people, name of Gresham. The kid was Wilton—no, Wilmot Gresham.”
It was a body blow. “But Oscar, there was nothing about him in your file!”
“Why should there be? The boy was only a couple of years older than Midge, and there was no need to drag him and his family into a murder case. He had gone back to school at Princeton after the family made him see the error of his ways, and had kept his promise never to see the girl again. We checked back on him thoroughly without his even knowing it, and he was in his dormitory room studying the night Midge was killed.”
“Studying on a hot Friday night in August? Summer school must have changed since my day. These alibis! And did he have an alibi for the Marika murder too?”
Piper rubbed his forehead wearily. “I don’t know. You can ask him, I suppose. The fellow graduated in midterm, and now I understand he’s got some sort of office-boy job on Wall Street, so presumably he lives here in town.”
“Oh dear,” sighed Miss Withers. “You’re right, he doesn’t fit into the Marika job at all. Because he couldn’t have known about the medium, and what she told Mrs. Rowan about a message from the Beyond. And Mr. Zotos gave me such a nice ready-made motive for him, too. For killing Midge, I mean. But I suppose it does help to eliminate suspects, doesn’t it?” She stood up. “I’d better run along and start eliminating some more.”
“Wait!” the Inspector said sharply.
“Now, Oscar, you’re not going to continue this farce of holding me as a prisoner?”
“I want you to have dinner.”
“What would I have at this hour, breakfast?” Then she did a double take. “Oh, you’re not actually inviting me out? What is this, an armistice?”
It was close to unconditional surrender, as the schoolteacher discovered when they were seated at a tiny table in a backyard outdoor restaurant in the Village, staring at each other over plates of chicken cacciatore. “You really want to know why I assigned a man to tail you today?” Piper said. “It was because I’m desperate and just about at the end of my rope, that’s why.”
“Oscar!”
He nodded glumly. “I got to thinking about the times in the past when you played a long shot and won. If your hunch about these two murders being connected is right this time too—well, I don’t want that man’s execution on my conscience. Are you getting anywhere? Do you know anything I don’t know?”
“Why, Oscar, you want a peek at my examination paper!”
“That’s about it.” The Inspector took up a bread stick, and gnawed it as if it had been one of his favorite perfectos. “Do you know the answer?”
“I wouldn’t say that, but I’ve learned most of the questions.” She looked at his untouched plate. “Oscar, are you sick?”
“Who wouldn’t be?” He smiled a bitter smile. “Did you see the newspapers?”
Miss Withers admitted that she had been otherwise occupied, and he produced a pocketful of clippings. She read: “1000 POLICE GET THEIR MAN … Near death in Bellevue City Hospital today lies Rollo (Banana-Nose) Wilson, smalltime sneak-thief wounded last night in biggest police manhunt since the capture of Two-Gun Crowley. Wilson was wanted by Headquarters homicide bureau for questioning in connection with the brutal strangling of showgirl Midge Harrington thirteen months ago, for which Andrew Rowan, playboy publicist, is slated to pay the extreme penalty next week in Sing Sing’s execution chamber …” She looked up blankly. “But Oscar—?”
“I know,” he interrupted. “It’s all a fantastic mistake. But Wilson was shot, and we had to give the press some excuse for it. We couldn’t mention the real reason for his arrest—you proved he was innocent of the Marika murder with your act with the rubber nose last night, and besides it turned out he was pulling a robbery somewhere else at the time. But this morning I had a headache and besides I was getting a riding from the Commish, so I told Smitty to get rid of the re
porters by telling them we wanted Banana-Nose in connection with some old murder case out of the files. He swears he didn’t say anything definitely about the Harrington case, but how they’d get wind of it otherwise—”
“It would be odd if they hadn’t, with Rowan making wills and changing insurance beneficiaries and all that,” she pointed out.
“Or maybe you started the rumor that the case was being reopened, running around trying to scare the suspects?” He shrugged. “Well, never mind how it happened, it’s happened. Wilson can’t live more than a few hours at the most. If Rowan is executed, and his will and the rest of it made public, don’t you see what the result is? There’ll be a great hue and cry about the police framing an innocent man and shooting down the one witness who might have saved him!”
“I see your point,” said the schoolteacher, adding sensibly, “but do stop trying to think on an empty stomach, it encourages ulcers.” She picked up the clips again. “Here’s something else!” she cried after a moment. “What’s this about a nationwide search for David Cawthorne? Wasn’t that the man Marika was sending money to?”
He nodded glumly. “Our last hope. But he’s probably changed his name. And we haven’t been able to locate a picture of him.”
Try those old copies of Billboard in Marika’s bookcase,” Miss Withers said softly. Or the theatrical booking agencies.”
“Huh?”
She whipped open her handbag, and produced a notebook. “Read this. It’s an extract from a review of a stage show that opened almost two years ago. Midge Harrington was in a dance act, Iris Dunn was straight woman for a comic on the same bill and that’s how the two girls met. But there was another act—”
Piper read the page of notes, and said, “So what?”
“Read it out loud, Oscar.”
“‘Cawthor the Great materializes the ghost of a mermaid named Mary …’ That’s silly, I thought mermaids weren’t supposed to have souls or anything.”
Green Ace Page 16
