Staircase 4

by Helen Reilly

  John Muir was a formless figure beside her. She repeated her question. “What are you doing here, John? How did you come to—?”

  John said patiently, “I told you. When I got to your apartment you had already left. You were on the corner getting into a cab. I was about to yell to you when I saw this guy”—he waved a hand—“at your heels. He got into another cab. He was obviously tailing you. My cab was still waiting for the light to change. That fellow over there followed you and I followed him. I would have joined you inside that joint but I wanted to see what your pussyfooting friend was up to.”

  Gabrielle’s bewilderment refused to go away. If the telephone call offering her information about the round man was genuine, on the level, and if the man hidden in the doorway of the tailor shop was the man who made it, why hadn’t he met her as agreed? If he wasn’t the man who had telephoned her, who was he? She narrowed her eyes peeringly. All she could really see was the swinging sign of the tailor shop. She took a step away from John. She said, “Suppose we go over there and see who that man is.”

  John pulled her back. “Gabrielle, don’t be a fool! This is no place to go looking for trouble. It’s not exactly a healthy spot at this time of night. Come on. We’re getting out of here. Let our friend across the street keep on enjoying the nice frosty air by himself. Watch your step, the going will be rough.” He swung Gabrielle around.

  She was too cold, too confused, to argue. She let John lead her over planking, between piles of brick, through a clutter of wheelbarrows and ladders and heaped debris, into the depths of the building and finally out of it into the side street. More darkness, but at least the sky was overhead, and here and there lighted windows began to appear and an occasional pedestrian and one or two trucks. Walking her fast to Eighth Avenue, John kept looking back over his shoulder. There were no cabs on Eighth. Across to Seventh and then to Sixth—it was a long trek. Gabrielle was breathless when he halted her just short of the corner. “Wait here, I’ll get a cab.”

  He went to the curb. The wind had fallen, so had the thermometer. That part of the city was darkened, empty. Gabrielle was tired and depressed. The evening had promised so much; it had produced so little. The elusive round man was a fattish will-o’-the-wisp she might have dreamed up in a nightmare. She was leaning against iron railings, huddled down in her coat, her eyes vacant on private cars going north and south at intervals, when she straightened hurriedly. The signal was red. A cab had pulled up for it twenty feet out in front and sufficiently to the left so that she could see into the dim interior. The woman in the back seat of the cab was Alice Amory.

  Gabrielle started forward. As she did so the signal flashed green and the cab went on. She stood still, staring after it, rubbing her cheek with her glove. She was mistaken. The woman in the disappearing cab wasn’t Alice, it was a stranger. She had been saved from making a fool of herself by the turning light. John hailed her then. A taxi at last—he was holding the door open. She got in. He got in beside her, gave the driver her address, and said, “What was it—why were you staring after that other cab?”

  “I thought the woman in it was Alice,” Gabrielle said. “It wasn’t. Besides—what would Alice be doing down here at this time of night? She’s home and in bed. She was dead tired when I left at half-past nine. It just looked like her for a moment.”

  They were almost at Thirty-Fourth Street. John leaned forward. “Stop here, driver.” Late as it was there were bright lights and plenty of people. John got out. “Back in a minute,” he said to Gabrielle. “I want to get cigarettes.”

  The driver remarked conversationally that it was a cold night and that it looked like it was going to be a bad winter and Gabrielle said yes, it did, didn’t it, and put her head back and closed her eyes. She was almost asleep when John got in and they drove on. He had had to walk almost a block. “Now,” he said, “what happened tonight? Why did you go down to that Jordon’s?” She told him about the telephone call, and he swore softly under his breath. “Gabrielle.” His voice was grim. He turned to her, put a gloved fist on her knee, tapped her knee lightly. “You were decoyed over there to that Jordon’s for a purpose. I don’t know what the purpose was—but I’m sure of one thing. If you’re right, if Mark’s death was murder, you’re fooling around with dynamite.”

  “Not very volatile stuff,” she said dryly. “I haven’t had much of a reaction so far.”

  “No?” John’s brows went up. “What about that fellow who followed you down to Jordon’s and didn’t go in?”

  “Maybe he didn’t join me because he saw you—and anyhow it was the first hint of any information about the round man. How could I not go?”

  John didn’t answer. The cab was pulling to a stop. He paid the driver, wouldn’t let her get out until he had looked up and down the street, then he hurried her across the pavement and up the steps. Inside, at the foot of the stairs, Gabrielle said, “It’s late, John. You only got back to New York this morning and you must be pretty tired. Tomorrow will be—”

  He put a hand on her elbow. “I’m going up with you.” The alert and wary air still clung to him. He not only went up with Gabrielle, he switched on all the lights in the apartment and looked into every room, made her look. He said, “Is there any sign of anything having been disturbed, any sign of anyone having been here since you left?”

  Gabrielle said no. Bedroom, kitchen, bath, living-room, and tiny maid’s room and bath were just as they had been when she went out. But John’s insistence, his precautions, had begun to infect her. She said tartly, “Do stop it, John, you’re frightening me.”

  “Good,” he told her trenchantly. “That’s what I want to do. Now sit down. I want to know everything that happened on the day Mark died—again.”

  Gabrielle settled herself in a corner of the couch and tucked her feet under her. She talked, slowly and evenly. It took a long while to satisfy John. He made her go over not only the facts but into every random impression she had had. When Mark said, looking after the round man in the lobby of the Devon that day, “So that was it”—what she had thought.

  Gabrielle listened to the clock tick, looked at the long-legged shadow of the stand lamp, at smoke from John’s cigarette. Well, what had she thought? She said, “It seemed to me as if he had connected something up, had solved, bitterly and disagreeably, some sort of puzzle.”

  “Just by looking at the round man?”

  “As far as I could tell.”

  “Was there anyone with the round man in the lobby, before he left?”

  “When I caught sight of him he was alone.”

  The waiting car and the woman in it, then. Gabrielle shook her head. The woman was nothing but a face without features beyond the round man. The car—she fumbled with scattered patches of memory, caught at something, lost it as she had in Tyrell’s study, found it again. The sea, the road along the sea up in Greenfield, a car in which old Mr. Bradley was being taken for an airing by his housekeeper-chauffeur—the car in front of the Devon had been the same make and model as the Bradley chariot. She said, “The car the round man got into was an old Packard cabriolet with a gray body and black fenders and black wheels.”

  “Ah!” John took a fresh cigarette from the glass box beside the green chair, lit it. “You don’t know what year?” Gabrielle didn’t, except that it must be in the late twenties. More questions, about Alice and Tyrell and Joanna Middleton and Claire and the Bonds and, surprisingly, about Brenda Holmes and Blake Evans; how they had taken Mark’s death, whether they had agreed with her in the beginning that Mark’s death was murder.

  “All right,” he admitted, with a grin at her expression, “maybe I am shooting all around the bull’s-eye. But I’ve got to get the picture. Don’t forget I wasn’t in New York.”

  Gabrielle could only say that all Mark’s friends had been profoundly shocked, that Tyrell and Alice had been wonderful. They had had an open mind at first. She didn’t know whether Brenda Holmes had been at the funeral or not, there had been a lot
of people. Joanna Middleton had been there, shrouded in crepe, and Blake Evans had been there because of Mark’s niece, Claire Middleton. He had been a help with Claire, who got hysterical—she had adored Mark.

  It was the second time John had brought up Blake’s name. She said, frowning, “What makes you ask about Blake Evans? He and Mark scarcely knew each other. Their only link was young Claire, and I don’t believe Claire and Blake were even engaged then, at least not formally.”

  John Muir shrugged. “I have a notion that if Mark was killed, it was by someone he knew. His gun, for instance—he kept it in the drawer of that long table near the window, a matter of common knowledge to his friends and only his friends. Your round man would scarcely have known about it. And then his sending that housekeeper of his, Mrs. Pendleton, out. Maybe he didn’t want her to see the person who was coming there.”

  Death by invitation—Gabrielle shivered. “You mean Mark sent for someone?”

  “Could be.”

  It went on for a long while. John was insatiable, would have kept it up all night if there had been anything more to get. But she had emptied herself of every scrap of knowledge, was drained, grayly exhausted, when he finally got up to go.

  He still wasn’t through. He said, turning his hat in long brown fingers, “That woman in the cab down there on Sixth Avenue at Twenty-Seventh Street that you thought was Alice—was the resemblance close?”

  Gabrielle said impatiently, “It wasn’t Alice. I know that now. It just looked like her for a second, in the dim light.”

  “Yes. Now about the telephone call that took you to that Jordon’s. You’re sure your caller mentioned the round man?”

  Was John questioning her veracity? Gabrielle said flatly, “I don’t know who else. The man who called me asked if I wanted information about the man who went to see Mark at lunch on June twenty-fifth.”

  “Well then”—John nodded as though a doubt had been dispelled—“I guess that’s that, and I’ve got everything straight… Mind?” He bent, scooped a handful of cigarettes from the glass box beside the green chair, thrust them into his pocket. “I’m going now. Lock up after me.”

  “You do believe I’m right, John, that Mark was murdered—no matter what the police say?”

  His glance was withdrawn. She could tell nothing from his expression. He said slowly, “I think the whole thing will bear re-examination. That round man of yours will have to be found. He may be guilty, he may be innocent. We won’t know until we get hold of him. I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. The firm has a man we use for confidential work, fellow named Pete Basil. I’m going to put the whole thing up to Pete. When he’s had a shot at it, we’ll know more.”

  John did believe her—a weight fell from Gabrielle’s shoulders. She straightened then, went with him to the door. He told her to lock it behind him. “And ‘don’t go down to the end of town without consulting me’—don’t go answering any more telephone calls, Gabrielle.”

  He was close to her in the warmth and stillness, was looking down at her intently. There was an odd little pause.

  John moved. He said abruptly, “You’re tired, Gabrielle. I shouldn’t have stayed so long. Go to bed and try and get a good sleep. As soon as anything develops I’ll let you know. Good night.” He opened the door, closed it behind him.

  Gabrielle locked it, listened to his footsteps retreat down the stairs, and went back to the living-room. She looked at the chair in which John had sat, at the arms on which his hands had lain. Bending, she picked up the lid of the glass box, started to put the lid on, and held it still, staring down into the box’s emptiness. John had stopped the cab near Thirty-Fourth Street to go and get cigarettes, yet he had none when he came in. Without volition she recalled the random movements of his hands over his pockets, his overcoat pockets and his suit pockets, before he sat down in the green chair. No, he had no cigarettes, he had smoked hers. Then—what had he left the cab near Thirty-Fourth Street to do?

  Chapter Six: New fears

  GABRIELLE DREAMED OF BALLOONS THAT NIGHT, great fat balloons with bloated heads and rudimentary feet dancing over marshland, that alternately turned into Tyrell and Blake Evans and Joanna and Tony Van Ness. The balloon that was Tony had a bottle and glass in its little hands and kept stamping something that had been Susan down into wet slime… It was horrible. She awoke with a headache. No Freud need apply—the source of the dream was obvious, John Muir and his questions the night before.

  An aspirin, a shower, a tall glass of orange juice, and three cups of coffee put her on her feet, made her feel immensely better. She no longer had to bear the weight she had been carrying alone. John Muir was going to help. She had convinced him that Mark’s death was murder and once John put his hand to a thing he would carry it through to the end. That was one of the qualities that had made him a success in the business he had inherited from an uncle while he was fighting in Italy. He not only had judgment and strength and decision, he had a lucky touch. The suit against his firm that would have been crippling had been settled in his favor, and troubles at the South American end had ironed themselves out. He would probably be a very rich man before he was through.

  It might take time but the round man would be found. The pin prick of doubt about the cigarettes John hadn’t bought on Thirty-Fourth Street vanished with the light. When he got to the store it might have been closed, or he might have left the cigarettes in the cab.

  Gabrielle began the day by getting rid of tasks that had accumulated during long weeks of inaction. There were letters to answer, friends to be contacted, business to be attended to—and she had lost a porcelain filling. She made an appointment with her dentist for two-thirty that afternoon and was dressed and ready to go when the phone rang.

  It was Alice. Alice began to talk in her electric way about her party. It was a flop. There were too many people. Tyrell didn’t care for that sort of thing. “I don’t know why I bother… Did you happen to notice Joanna Middleton, Gabrielle? She doesn’t seem to love you dearly, does she? Do you suppose it’s Mark’s money? And by the way, what are you doing about that, darling? Tyrell and Phil Bond both say you’ll have to exert yourself, that the estate has to be settled. Phil declares you’re an eel, he can’t get you to make an appointment.

  I don’t know what Joanna has to kick about really—she gets fifty thousand and she has plenty of her own. But she’s acquisitive, a magpie—always was. Perhaps it’s on account of Claire. I suppose Claire and Blake Evans will be married soon. He’s awfully good-looking. You really ought to warn that young man not to rave about you so. He did, at dinner. Maybe that got mother-dear’s back up.”

  Alice wanted Gabrielle to go with her to the Larks’ for cocktails. “I couldn’t get out of it and I don’t see how I’m to stand them without support. Tyrell promised faithfully, but he’s deep in jugs and jars and retorts. Such smells in that laboratory of his, frightful. I might as well be married to the information booth in Grand Central for all the good I get out of him. And Joe Blanford’s in Florida and Arthur broke his leg skiing in Quebec.”

  Gabrielle explained that she couldn’t go to the Larks’, she was in for a solid hour’s session with her dentist. “I’ve been putting it off for ages… Did people stay on last night, Alice? Did you get to bed late?”

  There was the slightest of pauses. Then Alice said, “Not very. You looked wonderful. You do feel better, don’t you?” Gabrielle said she did, and hung up.

  The hot-water faucet in the bathroom was dripping. She went in to turn it off. If Alice had been downtown the night before she would have said so. Anyhow the woman huddled in the corner of the cab wasn’t Alice. Alice didn’t huddle.

  Gabrielle was much more than an hour at her dentist’s. When she arrived home a small man in a brownish-gray topcoat and a brownish-gray hat was waiting outside her door. He removed his hat. Neat hair that was neither gray or brown made him look like a mouse, gentle and sad. “My name is Todhunter,” he said in a soft, whispering voice, add
ing, “from the Homicide Squad.” He showed her his credentials. “I’d like to have a few words with you, Miss.”

  Gabrielle stared her surprise. Todhunter said humbly, “It’s just for the record—to get things finished up, like.”

  For the record—a record of suicide. In the living-room Gabrielle waved him coldly to a chair. “Sit down—did you say detective?” She compromised on: “Mr. Todhunter.”

  Todhunter sat. He murmured on about the record and about his chief, Inspector McKee of the Homicide Squad. The Inspector was in the West. He had known Mr. Middleton for a long while.

  Gabrielle had never heard of Inspector McKee. She answered the little detective’s routine questions, said, as she had said a thousand times before, shadows around her again, that she had heard no one in Mark’s apartment, but that she had heard the hinge of the front door creak as someone went out.

  “Thank you, Miss. Now, while you were there that afternoon, you didn’t hear Mr. Middleton use the telephone, did you?”

  Gabrielle said, “But I didn’t know Mr. Middleton was there. I was in an upstairs room with the door closed. Oh—” She stared at Todhunter. “I did hear the phone downstairs. I picked up the instrument in my room and someone was dialing, so I hung up. I thought it was Mark’s housekeeper, Mrs. Pendleton, but—Mrs. Pendleton was out then. It must have been Mark.” Eagerness invaded her.

  It died at Todhunter’s prim nod. “That’s what we thought.” She gave him an emphatic no when he asked whether she had touched anything in the room after she had discovered Mark on the floor.

  “I see. Now, since Mr. Middleton died, Miss—has anything occurred?”

  Gabrielle hesitated. But she had nothing to conceal. She told him about the telephone call last night when she got home from the Amorys’, and going to Jordon’s, and her disappointment when her caller didn’t turn up. “It was a wild-goose chase,” She didn’t mention John Muir.