Staircase 4

by Helen Reilly

  Gabrielle said, smiling, “The superintendent sent me,” and Miss Nelson opened the door wider. “Oh, the superintendent. Come in.”

  Inside the little hall Gabrielle explained that she was looking madly for an apartment. “Well, I do want to sublet,” Miss Nelson admitted, “but I’m not so sure just when. Now that you’re here, though, you might as well look around.”

  Looking around didn’t take long. The apartment consisted of a bedroom and bath to the left, a kitchen straight ahead, with a view of a wilderness of backyard fences beyond a fire escape, and the living-room with a dinette attached to it, on the right.

  The moment Gabrielle entered the living-room she found what she had been seeking for so long. He was there, the man who had lived so intensely in her mind, the man in whom at times she had almost begun to disbelieve under the pressure of universal skepticism. He wasn’t there in the flesh. He gazed at her unblinkingly out of an elaborate frame on top of a radio cabinet between the windows.

  Hold it, Gabrielle warned herself. Don’t let this woman see.

  Apparently Miss Nelson did see something. Her prominent blue eyes behind glasses studied Gabrielle intently. There was wariness in them. “I’m not sure about subletting… If I did, I’d have to have references. When would you want the apartment?”

  Gabrielle kept her gaze carefully away from the beacon on top of the radio cabinet, tried frantically to put all thought of the round man from her mind—there was such a thing as thought transference. She knew what she was going to do, but that was for later.

  “As soon as I could get it,” she said brightly. “But if I even knew I was going to have a place, I’d be happy. Do you know what it is to live in a hotel room? Or don’t you?”

  Miss Nelson thawed, ever so slightly. “Sure I know—it’s tough.”

  She worked for a living, Gabrielle decided, and had just come in. There were no cigarette stubs in the ash trays, no litter, and a scrap of paper cuff was attached to one of her sleeves. Apparently she lived alone. Gabrielle pretended to look around judiciously. “My brother and I do want some place where we can cook our own meals… One bedroom—does that davenport open out?”

  The davenport did. She chatted for another minute or two with Miss Nelson, burning with excitement held firmly in check. Was the round man a relative of this woman’s, a boy friend? No matter, his photograph was there. At last she could prove that he actually existed. Any last lingering doubt John Muir might have of his existence would be finally removed when he saw the photograph—if only she could get him here. She turned to Miss Nelson. “I hate to bother you like this, but I’ll be frank. My brother’s a—bit of a fuss-budget—you know what men are.” That won a faint smile and she went on: “The rent won’t bother me if I can only keep him happy. Would it be possible for me to get my brother and bring him here to see the apartment tonight? If he likes it, I’m sure we can agree about the price, then, when you get ready—well, I’d know I had some place to come to.”

  Miss Nelson had to go out in a few minutes and again later on, but she was interested. “I guess it’d be all right. Could you make it about seven-thirty?”

  Gabrielle looked at her wrist watch. It was twenty after five. Get hold of John right away, he might have other plans for the evening, but to come here with her wouldn’t take long. “That would do nicely, Miss Nelson.”

  Five minutes later she was in a phone booth in a drugstore in the next block. About to drop a coin into the slot, Gabrielle hesitated. Why call John Muir? Why not Tyrell, or Phil Bond, or better still, Inspector McKee? No, she thought, her gaze cold on brightly colored jars of bath powder beyond the glass door, Phil Bond and Tyrell had been kind and patiently indulgent, but they had never really believed in the round man. John Muir had, up to a point. As for the Inspector—she shrugged slim shoulders—she hadn’t been fortunate in her encounters with the police. She inserted the coin, listened to its tinkle, and pressed the receiver firmly to her ear.

  John Muir wasn’t at his office. She got him at home. “John,” she said quickly, “I found the round man.”

  “What?”

  “Yes.” Gabrielle was triumphant. “At least—not the round man himself but—”

  John guessed. “The woman who drove off with him from the Devon?”

  “In person—a Miss Nelson. You and I are going to see Miss Nelson in a little while.”

  John sounded almost incoherent with worry. Indistinguishable mutterings… “What have you been up to, Gabrielle?”

  She didn’t want to say too much over the phone. “Never mind. I’ll explain when I see you.” She told him where to meet her, and when—553A East Twelfth Street at seven twenty-five. “Can you make it?”

  John said of course, repeated the address and the time. “Where are you now?” She said, “I’m in a drugstore on First Avenue,” and waited for him to ask her to have cocktails with him or an early dinner, to pass the time. He didn’t. She said quickly, into the mouthpiece, “See you, then,” and rang off and left the drugstore, angry, and enraged at her anger. She hadn’t asked John Muir to dine with her, hadn’t intimated that she was at a loose end. Why should he be expected to drop everything at a moment’s notice, and rush over here now, when she had specifically asked him to meet her at seven twenty-five? He had his own affairs to attend to, his own commitments.

  She thought again of what Alice Amory had told her, and of John Muir’s conversation with her on the day he had come up to New York. She had no doubt that Mark had loved her, but it might have been in much the same way she loved him, tenderly and protectively. John Muir could have known that Mark’s interest in Brenda Holmes wasn’t dead, that could have been why he warned her. If so, how bitterly ironical it was that she should have fancied herself torn between two men in a dream world of her own, while all the time the real three emotionally involved were Mark and John Muir and Brenda Holmes.

  Water under the bridge, over the dam—Gabrielle went into a beanery down the block, ordered a roast-beef sandwich she couldn’t eat, drank coffee, and fastened her thoughts firmly on the round man. Miss Nelson was the lead to him, the only lead. She had unearthed Miss Nelson. Her job was done, once John saw Miss Nelson, saw the picture of the round, man; he could carry the ball from then on in.

  An odor of frying meat, shouted orders; the dingy little restaurant was beginning to fill up. She couldn’t stay in the place. There was still an hour and a half to be disposed of. It was too cold to walk the streets; besides, she had had enough of walking, had been doing little else for three days. A movie sign down the block caught her eye. She entered the theater at ten minutes past six, left it at twenty past seven and arrived in front of the apartment on Twelfth Street with a minute to spare.

  It had grown colder and there was a low mist. Passers-by huddled in coats, a trickle of traffic, windows pouring light faintly out into the street; the wind from the river blew patches of fog about and the cries of the boats were louder. John Muir was late. It was seven-thirty and then it was seven thirty-five. Gabrielle was angry again. She was tired and on edge and her feet, her whole body, ached. Moreover, Miss Nelson had said she was going out. If she left now there would be no way of getting into her apartment. Go in, she decided, talk to the woman, give her some excuse and try to detain her.

  At twenty minutes of eight Gabrielle turned on her heel, entered the lobby, and mounted the stairs. She rang Miss Nelson’s bell. There was no answer. Gabrielle frowned. The woman might be in the bathroom taking a shower… She looked exasperatedly at the closed door. The door wasn’t closed, not quite, it had simply swung to, the latch wasn’t caught. She gave it a push, stepped into the narrow inner hall.

  “Miss Nelson.” Silence. Curious… The living-room door was closed. Suppose John was in there with Miss Nelson, hadn’t waited downstairs. Her patience tore. Aware that she was doing an unwise thing, she walked to the living-room door, opened it. Lamplight, stillness, no voices; the room was empty.

  Gabrielle’s glance went to
the radio cabinet between the windows. The top of it was bare. There was nothing on it. The photograph of the round man was gone.

  Gabrielle stood staring at the slab of polished wood. So she hadn’t been as clever as she had thought she had been. She hadn’t deceived Miss Nelson for a moment; it was Miss Nelson who had taken her over the jumps. The woman had suspected her from the minute she entered the apartment. When John Muir came he wasn’t going to find anything. Once more, at the zenith hour, the round man had eluded her. Miss Nelson was gone, and the photograph with her—but gone where? Women didn’t walk out of their apartments at night leaving their front doors open. And yet Miss Nelson wasn’t here… Make sure…

  Gabrielle turned. A dinette opening out of the living-room, and then the kitchen; she didn’t get any farther than the rim, the very edge of the dinette. The plaster arch separating it from the living-room was hard between her shoulder blades. It was solid, something to lean against.

  Two settles and a table in between, a sugar bowl, a salt and a pepper shaker on a paper doily on the table, that was all. But underneath the table, on the floor, and quite close to her, so close that she could have reached out and touched it with the toe of her sandal, a sawdust figure was sprawled, a great jointless rag doll.

  Overhead light poured down on twisted limbs, on the greenish white face, the big nose in profile against the beige rug. The beige was stained with purple wetness. The twisted limbs would never move again. The eyes staring at a credenza against the far wall would never flicker. The mole on the balding forehead, the bullet head; the man lying at her feet was the cab man who had driven her to Grand Central last week, and who had then appeared and disappeared beyond the cedars on Susan’s lawn in Greenfield.

  The room was swinging to and fro. She was going to faint… She mustn’t faint. She was alone in the apartment with a dead man. A faint sound jerked her head up. She tore her gaze from the floor. She wasn’t alone in the apartment with the dead man. There was someone else there. The door from the kitchen was being pushed open slowly, inch by careful inch.

  Chapter Thirteen: The blood-stained envelope

  GABRIELLE KEPT HER EYES ON THE OPENING DOOR. Run, her mind shrieked at her, scream—get help. She couldn’t stir. Whoever had killed the man on the floor, so twisted, so horribly still, was there, was coming in, coming toward her. A hand, an arm, a face…

  Gabrielle sagged and began to slump.

  The room was gone altogether now. There was nothing but greasy billowing smoke with the dead man hidden in it, and above waves of grayness the man who had stepped into the dinette.

  “John.” Her cry was the merest thread. She stumbled forward, fell.

  John Muir was across to her, was lifting her to her feet. They were out of the dinette and in the living-room, standing in the middle of it. John was holding her elbows, supporting her. His face was carved brown stone, the bones of it, under a taut skin, sharply accented in a bleak pattern of light and shade. His eyes were darkly bright. There was an air of poised wariness about him. He was speaking. His voice was quiet. “Gabrielle—what happened?”

  She tried to draw back. “I didn’t kill him.”

  “Don’t be foolish.” John gave her a shake. “Get hold of yourself, Gabrielle. You shouldn’t have come up. I meant to stop you.” He held her off, looked down. “Damn… I was afraid of that.”

  The front of Gabrielle’s polo coat was stained with brown redness that was the dead man’s blood. Folds of it had trailed in the pool under his head when she fell to the floor. The stains stood out hideously on the soft pile of the cloth. Her stomach took an ascending lurch. She controlled sickness with an effort.

  “Wait here.” John left the room. She heard him rummaging in a closet. Hangers clashed. He came back with a coat. It was the brown coat with the hood Miss Nelson had worn earlier that evening. It had a plaid lining.

  “Here,” John held it for her. “Put this on. You can’t go through the streets like that.” The coat was too large and too long. Over her own it felt bulky, uncomfortable. It hid the spots.

  “Did you touch anything?” he asked. Gabrielle said no, extended her gloved hands.

  John’s hands were also gloved. “All right, come on.” Gabrielle didn’t move. How dreadful the little apartment was, how forlorn and boxlike and drab. The small attempts at decoration, the few possessions, the painstaking cleanliness, smashed and despoiled by the great ugly stain of murder. Shadow banked the walls. Light was only there when you looked at it directly. The whole place had an uneasy, impermanent air, seemed to wait for noisy discovery, for sirens shrilling urgently in the night, for brass-buttoned official voices and the tramp of implacable footsteps.

  She said, “But John, we can’t… What are we going to do—about him?” and glanced toward the dinette. Her stomach surged again, and she looked away.

  “We’ll take care of him later.” John was impatient. Gabrielle said, “I didn’t kill him, John. You didn’t kill him.” There was no question in her voice but she wanted to hear him say it. He didn’t say it. He said carefully, restraining himself, “That’s fine. That’s splendid, dear. All you have to do is to say so to the police. They’ll believe you, of course. They’re such trusting fellows. You’ve already been accused of murder by a loving correspondent. Bills of Mark’s were planted on you. The District Attorney thinks you killed Mark. Gabrielle, use your wits—what do you suppose will happen if you’re found in this place?”

  “Where’s Miss Nelson? Where did she go?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea.”

  “Then—who let you in?”

  “Nobody. I walked in. The door wasn’t locked. He”—John motioned with his head—“was there, just as he is now. No one else.”

  “Who is he?”

  John shrugged. “All I know is that he was the man who followed you down to that Jordon’s the night you were decoyed there. Come on, Gabrielle. You had nothing to do with his death. But if you’re found here—” John was right. And yet… The decision was taken out of their hands.

  The doorbell rang.

  The peal was loud, insistent, a blow with a fist. The walls moved in on Gabrielle. The grayness thickened. The door was unlocked. It was the only door. There was no other way out of the apartment. They were pinned there, bottled up. This was the end. There was no escape for either of them.

  The doorbell rang again.

  The call went into the precinct at seven fifty-three. The prowl car was there as quick as a wink, the first contingent of the law. The call was made by a Mr. E. T. Brown, who lived opposite Miss Nelson and who had heard the screams issuing from her apartment. The screaming was done by Mrs. Mabel Tash who was calling on Miss Nelson by prearrangement. Mrs. Tash and Miss Nelson, who were friends, were to have gone to a movie together. Finding the door unlocked and getting no answer to her ring, Mrs. Tash had walked in, and almost into the dead man. Except for the corpse the apartment was untenanted. Miss Nelson was not at home.

  The prowl car was followed by precinct detectives, by men from Headquarters. An Assistant Medical Examiner arrived, a man from the District Attorney’s office, and a detective from Homicide.

  The dead man’s pockets had been rifled. They were empty except for a handkerchief, a crushed cigar, some change, and a watch. The watch had stopped at seven-fourteen. The dead man’s skull had been smashed in with a heavy metal vase. The metal vase was Miss Nelson’s, she had won it at bingo. Miss Nelson had not yet put in an appearance. Her car, a Packard ’28, was in the garage two blocks away. She had garaged it herself at around six forty-five, after which she had returned to her apartment, letting herself in with her key, according to her next-door neighbor Mrs. Elmo, at a few minutes of seven. No one had seen her leave.

  The terrain looked over; Miss Nelson’s departure had been hasty. An ordinarily neat bedroom was in disorder. Clothing had been snatched from closet and bureau drawers, at least two dresses, a robe and slippers, other articles.

  “Florence didn�
��t kill that man. Florence wouldn’t kill anyone!” Mrs. Tash sobbed.

  “Sure, she didn’t,” Mrs. Tash was told soothingly. “We just want to talk to her, that’s all. What kind of a coat would she have been wearing, what kind of a hat?”

  At a few minutes before nine the alarm went out from the small gold room at the top of the long gray building on Centre Street to all prowl cars and all personnel within the city limits to pick up and detain a woman aged thirty-two or -three, five feet eight inches in height, with blue eyes, fair hair, and glasses, wearing a brown coat with a brown hood and possibly carrying a brown leather suitcase.

  The detectives went on talking to Mrs. Tash and the tenants and building the picture. Florence Nelson had lived in the Sycamore for a little over a year. She was employed as a stenographer by the firm of Enderby and Horsch, lithographers, in Queens, where Mrs. Tash also worked.

  Miss Nelson was quiet and steady, didn’t drink or run around. Boyfriends? Mrs. Tash couldn’t say, except that there was someone named Bert; his picture was on the radio. Bert’s picture wasn’t on the radio. Miss Nelson had apparently taken it with her when she left.

  An examination of a desk in the living-room revealed that Miss Nelson paid her bills promptly, that she had a sister Ethel in Montana and two thousand, three hundred and twenty-seven dollars and twenty-three cents in the savings bank.

  The savings bank book was gravy. Miss Nelson might want it. There were other things she might want more. Wait and see.

  The police asked about visitors to and from the apartment between Miss Nelson’s return at around seven and Mrs. Tash’s arrival at 7:45. A Mr. Sturgeon (5A) had passed the man who was now dead, in the lobby at perhaps 7:10 or thereabouts. For the rest, Miss Nelson, they said, had thought of taking a good long vacation and subletting her apartment.