Staircase 4

by Helen Reilly

  The Commissioner drummed noiseless fingers on the blotter in front of him. The Borough Commander and the Chief of the Detective Division exchanged glances. A precinct man shuffled his feet. There was nothing to say. The inquiry into Mark Middleton’s death had been very thorough. Members of the family never liked suicide, but the facts were all there. Incentive and opportunity had been established. They were borne out by the evidence. Mark Middleton was an invalid. He had been reduced from a strong man to a cripple in the space of three months. He was engaged to marry a young and beautiful woman. His physical condition preyed on his mind. He hadn’t been able to face marriage, had put an end to its possibility with a bullet. According to his sister-in-law, Joanna Middleton, he had alluded to himself bitterly as a cripple many times. It was the girl herself who had insisted on going on with the marriage.

  Everything about the dead man underscored this reconstruction. He had no enemies, no financial troubles; he was a wealthy man. He had lunched with his fiancée the day he died. It was a farewell luncheon. He had already provided for her financially. Very early in the game a suggestion had been made that his fiancée might have killed him, but there was absolutely nothing against her, and she had no motive. She was unaware of the disposition of the estate, and the relationship between them, her background, reputation, negatived the idea in the light of the general setup. Gabrielle Conant didn’t know Mark Middleton was in the apartment when he killed himself. He didn’t know she was there; he thought he was alone, had arranged to be alone. He had sent his housekeeper out on an errand and then pulled the trigger of the gun, which was his own.

  There wasn’t a scintilla of evidence to bolster Miss Conant’s assertion of murder. She thought she had heard the front door close. It was possible; a great many things were possible. They were of no importance unless they were back to back with proof. And there was absolutely no proof of the presence of a third person in the Middleton apartment when the bullet that killed him entered Mark Middleton’s body. For the rest, the girl’s vague charges against—peculiar verbiage—“a round man in a gray suit” who had called on Middleton eight weeks before he died and whom Middleton had stared after angrily in the Hotel Devon on the day of his death, didn’t amount to a hill of beans.

  Sitting there in frost-edged, sparkling October sunlight, her eyes shadowed, clasped hands tight in her lap, Gabrielle felt the atmosphere of disbelief. It beat against her in waves. Why wouldn’t they see? she thought despairingly. There was only one thing that could possibly have made Mark kill himself, just possibly, and even that she doubted. If he had found out about herself and John Muir, how she had once felt about John Muir, he might have done it. But he hadn’t found out. No one knew that John Muir had been in New York on the day it happened. Cables informing him of Mark’s death had reached Sao Paulo too late for him to come back for the funeral. No. Mark had been shot down in cold blood, without a chance to defend himself, by an unknown assailant.

  She went back doggedly to the round man, fighting a tight throat. “That man, the round man, had something to do with Mark’s death, Commissioner. I know it. Mark tried to get in touch with his lawyer, Phil Bond, that afternoon, and couldn’t. I think he meant to tell Phil Bond something—something important that he found out. I think he sent for the round man too, and that the round man came—and killed him.”

  Gabrielle stopped talking. She felt exhausted, spent.

  The silence was heavy. It remained unbroken. The police officials sat with folded arms, except for the Commissioner, who continued to drum soundlessly on his desk. Tyrell had turned and was looking at him. Alice was looking at fading leaves beyond the window, a handkerchief pressed to her lips.

  There was one exception to the general attitude of negation that Gabrielle didn’t see. A small mousy man in a corner, a little wisp of a man completely nondescript in appearance, had listened intently, his ears wide open. His name was Todhunter and he was a detective attached to the Manhattan Homicide Squad. He was there because Christopher McKee, who headed the Homicide Squad, was out of town. Todhunter also looked at the Commissioner, and reached unobtrusively for his hat. The girl was about to be given the official brush-off.

  Commissioner Carey was on his feet. “I’m sorry, Miss Conant, but we’ve done everything we could, and, as things are now, I’m afraid the verdict must stand. Of course, later, if anything should develop—”

  The blow fell crashingly on Gabrielle’s bent head. She had hoped for so much from this personal interview with Commissioner Carey, had heard that he was different–perceptive, understanding, clever, that the obvious meant little to him, that he could see where blunter and more forthright officials were blind. She was mistaken. He hadn’t seen. She got up a little unsteadily. This was the end of the road.

  Chapter Four: A ghost of a case

  THE RADIATOR HISSED, wind blew, a siren wailed, the distant clamor of traffic rose and fell, the clock on the mantel ticked. It was a ghost of a tick, constant and inexorable behind the outer sounds. Gabrielle put the book she was holding face down on the coffee table in front of her with a small slam. She sat up, swung her feet to the floor.

  It was ten minutes after eight on the night of November the twelfth. A little over a month had passed since the interview in the Commissioner’s office put the official stamp of suicide on Mark’s death. She had spent most of the intervening weeks alone, shutting herself away from her cousin Susan and Tony and Alice and Tyrell Amory, from all her associates and friends—they meant to be kind but their solicitude merely succeeded in rubbing her raw. Belief was what she wanted, belief that Mark had been killed, and that she had heard his murderer fleeing from the apartment. No one believed her.

  She left the lighted emptiness of the living-room, went into the bedroom, and threw off her housecoat. It was Tyrell Amory’s birthday and Alice was giving a party for him. She had asked Gabrielle to go but Gabrielle had refused. What had happened that afternoon, because she couldn’t get rid of it, shake it off, made her change her mind.

  She had been fighting it ever since she got in at four o’clock. The fight was lost. For the first time she was afraid, not of anyone else, but of herself. Perhaps the doctor to whom Alice had insisted on taking her was right. He had said, “It won’t do, Miss Conant. If people don’t bend, they break. I wouldn’t want to answer for your condition if you continue to remain alone and brood.” There were the others, too, Tyrell and Alice and the Bonds and Susan and even Tony Van Ness; they no longer said, “Mark may not have committed suicide, he may have been killed—but how are you going to prove it?” They said, “Yes, dear, yes,” and turned the subject to what she’d like to do, where she’d like to go.

  The incident of that afternoon was an accident, of course. A crowded subway platform, gloom, murk, dripping umbrellas, bodies pressed close together in a wedged mass, a mass that eddied and shifted under the impact of additions from the locals, the stairs; she was standing near the southern end of the northbound platform and an express was coming in fast when someone gave her a violent shove. She had almost fallen to the tracks, had missed falling by a hair, and by the edge of the guard rail with which her shoulder collided. The people milling around her hadn’t noticed, except for a stout red-faced man with an umbrella, who had said, “Here, Miss, here,” and had hauled her back a foot or two, with a suspicious glance, hurrying off as the train came to a grinding stop. The red-faced man was evidently convinced that she had attempted suicide and wanted nothing more to do with her. Certainly the shove was accidental. There was no question about that. It was the thought flashing through her mind: Someone is trying to kill me, that frightened her. Not because she believed anyone really was, but because of the idea itself. That way madness lay, a budding persecution complex, the beginnings of dementia.

  Her wild surmise was the warning signal, unless someone had tried to—Oh, stop it, she told herself angrily. When the case was at an end as far as the police were concerned, why should anyone want her dead? She had told ev
erything she knew, to no avail. She had nothing more to add.

  She did her hair, hoping that there wouldn’t be a crowd at the Amorys’. Alice attracted people in droves with her quick tongue, her warmth, and her vivid, and fleeting, enthusiasms. Gabrielle smiled at the thought of some of them. She reflected that if Alice hadn’t been born with money she would have been an artist, a painter, probably. She only dabbled with painting now, as she did with sculpture and music. Tyrell was perfect for her flamelike ardor, her restlessness. He was as steady as a rock, gave Alice something solid to tie to. It was a pity they had no children.

  At the closet Gabrielle replaced the black crepe she had instinctively reached for. She hadn’t gone into mourning for Mark, mourning was an outmoded symbol, it was simply that she hadn’t felt like colors. Instead of the black crepe she took out a plain white sheath of heavy silk with long bishop sleeves, slid it over her head, threw a sling of gold coins around her throat, and did her mouth. Looking at her reflection in the mirror as though she were another person, she thought disinterestedly that the effect was good. The dress accentuated her slenderness, the darkness of her upswept hair. White skin, gray eyes at a tilt under long brows—good, yes—but good for what? She turned aside, got into a cape, and picked up purse and gloves.

  Twenty minutes later she entered the Amorys’ apartment in the East Sixties, and received a severe shock. She heard a voice beyond the green taffeta curtains (new, they had been yellow satin two weeks ago). It was a voice she would have known if she heard it in a sandstorm in the middle of the Sahara. John Muir wasn’t in Sao Paulo, he was in the Amory living-room.

  Alice came into the foyer. “Gabrielle, darling!” She was surprised and pleased. “It was sweet of you to come—but why couldn’t you make it for dinner? We had a perfectly marvelous Smithfield ham.” She linked an arm through Gabrielle’s and they went between the curtains together. The living-room, a long room stretching to a solid sheet of glass at the far end that overlooked the laboratory where Tyrell worked, had been completely done over. The dim gilt and tapestries were gone. Light was flung back from apricot walls on vivid greens and yellows and blues and reds.

  “Like it?” Alice asked anxiously and Gabrielle said it was lovely. Alice was uncertain. “I don’t know. I saw a stunning zebra today—no, no, not a live one. China. In a place on Sixth Avenue. Stripes might have been better.”

  There were a lot of people. The Bonds were there and Alice’s cousin, Sylvia Medford, and three or four strange men and the very rich and very boring Larks—and Joanna Middleton and her daughter Claire. Gabrielle hadn’t seen Joanna since Mark’s funeral. She was in black. It made her skin sallow.

  At Gabrielle’s entrance there was the slightest of pauses. It was as though a performing tiger had suddenly appeared. Conversations were immediately resumed and curious glances averted, but the break had been there. They all knew the stand she had taken about Mark’s death, probably all thought her slightly mad. Let them, she thought coldly.

  Across the width of the room Joanna nodded to Gabrielle without smiling. The nod was brief. Her gaze lingered on Gabrielle’s dress, on the glitter of coins around her throat, appraisingly and without expression. Tyrell blanked Joanna out. “Gabrielle!” Like Alice he was pleased that she had come. She wished him many happy returns and he said nobody over thirty-five should have a birthday, that it tended to humiliate and degrade: then: “Guess who’s here. John—he just got in.”

  John Muir was coming toward them. Gabrielle gathered herself together, turned. Her mouth felt stiff. “John—hello.”

  Change had been so much a part of her life for the last two months that she had expected him to be different. He was exactly the same, tall and commandingly casual and at ease, except for his taut skin burned brown by warmer suns. She looked up into his face, and was filled with a sort of dull wonder and relief.

  Mark’s death must have cauterized some essential nerve. She felt absolutely nothing.

  John took her hand. His eyes studied her. “How are you, Gabrielle? Better? I hear you haven’t been well,” and then in a different, lower tone: “I wish I had been in New York when Mark died. I might have been able to—help.”

  Gabrielle’s pulse quickened. What did he mean by that? “Mark didn’t kill himself, you know.” She had to say it, aware as she spoke of the swift exasperation in Alice, of Tyrell’s sigh.

  John said, “Tyrell’s been telling me how you feel about—Mark’s death. I’d like to hear what you think. Let’s go into the other room, shall we?”

  Alice rounded on him, a darting firefly. “John! It’s Tyrell’s birthday…” She sent out sparks, her mouth down-curving with annoyance.

  Gabrielle didn’t blame her. It must be tiresome to hear the same story over and over again, a story you didn’t believe. “I won’t keep her long,” John promised. Again the glances, covert and observing, as she walked down the room beside him.

  “Gabrielle—” Susan’s husband, Tony Van Ness, tall and buccaneering and haggardly handsome, detached himself from a group around the piano.

  Gabrielle said hello, and looked at Tony more closely. What was he doing in New York? He was supposed to be working. Excessive drinking wasn’t one of Tony’s vices, but he had definitely had a number of drinks. There were patches of color on his high cheekbones and his eyes were suspiciously bright. “I didn’t see you come in,” he complained, and, to John Muir: “She’s been cutting us, Muir, there’s no getting at her, she won’t have a thing to do with us.”

  Tony’s anxiety for her company amused Gabrielle. They weren’t on those terms. An armed truce about summed it up. Under other circumstances she might have liked him, as Susan’s husband he was impossible. He was a painter and a good one, could have all the work he wanted, if he would only buckle down. She said, “I didn’t know you were in New York, Tony. Susan told me over the phone this morning that you were doing a cover for Drake’s.”

  “Finished it, Gorgeous. Let’s sit down and have a drink.” He put a hand on her arm.

  She drew away. “Not now, Tony.”

  “Oh, come on, honey.”

  “Honey”—he must be drunk.

  John Muir said good-humoredly, “Gangway, Van Ness, your turn will come later,” and they moved on.

  Sitting erect in the corner of a red-leather couch in front of the fire in Tyrell’s study, Gabrielle retold the story she had told so often before, giving John the salient points and keeping it brief. People didn’t want to be bored.

  As she talked she thought with part of her mind, How amazing! What delusions we build for ourselves! I was madly in love with this man once, and now he means nothing to me. Dark-brown hair, squarish brow, finely cut mouth, penetrating eyes, an air of power, of complete competence in anything he might undertake; she didn’t need to glance at him to see how he looked.

  She finished her tale. There was a pause. The silky yellow-apricot fire muttered. Everything else in the room was still. Gabrielle waited. John Muir was not a person to her then. He was a door on which she knocked, desperately seeking shelter, as she had knocked on so many others, to find them closed, gently, inexorably, in her face. “Rest, dear—rest. Don’t think of it any more.” Drink this, take that, powders, pills—and deaf ears. When murder had been committed, when Mark had been killed, shot down cruelly on the instant—and his death made to look like suicide. She hadn’t expected to meet John Muir. If she had known he was going to be here she would have stayed home. Now he had become her last chance. She had exhausted the list of everyone to whom she could conceivably go.

  John spoke, and warmth rushed into the vacuum of her coldness. He wasn’t going to brush her away, at once, anyhow. He said slowly, “If only I’d stayed in New York that night… I didn’t get the cable telling me about Mark until I was back in Sao Paulo.” He took an envelope and a pencil from a pocket. “Now…”

  Dates. A description of the round man. The steps that had already been taken to locate him. Gabrielle described her visit to
Mark’s office to look over the personnel, her visit to the Identification Bureau at Police Headquarters, the advertisements in the personal columns of the papers asking for information from or concerning the man who had called on Mark on the afternoon of June the twenty-fifth at 2 p.m.

  “What about the car the fellow drove away from the Devon in?” John wanted to know.

  Gabrielle shook her head. “The police asked me that. I didn’t see the license number. I don’t know what sort of car it was except that”—she thought back reachingly—“it wasn’t a new model. It had a gray top, I think, and—it was long and low.” A more precise image flickered at the back of her memory, retreated, dissolved. She shrugged.

  “Never mind,” John said. “Was there anyone else in the car?”

  Gabrielle gazed at spirals of smoke rising from her cigarette and tried to concentrate. Hazy summer sunlight, the round man crossing the pavement with his bouncy walk; the car was facing north and he had stepped into it from the curb. His face visible through the open window—another face beyond his? It was beginning to come back.

  She sat up sharply. “Yes. There was a woman in the car with him. The woman was behind the wheel. It must have been the woman who drove the car away.”

  She was excited. She looked at John.

  John wasn’t looking at her. They sat facing each other with the length of the couch between them. The couch was close to the hearth and the bulk of the room was behind it, shadowy in low light. They both saw it at the same moment, from different angles. Gabrielle saw it in the reducing mirror above the mantel out of the tail of her eye, a long black slit where there should have been unbroken whiteness—the door on the far side of the room was a little open.