Time to Die

by Hilda Lawrence

  Beacham spoke hopelessly. “Why didn’t she tell me?”

  “She’d been trained to make her own decisions. She thought she could handle it alone. And I think she wasn’t entirely sure until she checked the hospital records. She knew then. And when she came back, I think she went out to Bide-A-Wee and double-checked. I think she saw more than Wilcox and I saw when we looked through the window of number four.

  “And I don’t think Miss Rayner knew who Cassie was until the day before Cassie went to New York. Cassie wouldn’t have gone if she had thought Miss Rayner suspected. It wouldn’t have been safe. Then, the day before she left she saw a picture of herself in Spangler’s window. She hadn’t known it was there. I think it gave her a moment’s panic. Spangler says it was a young-looking picture. I can see Cassie standing before that dingy window, staring at the picture screen, seeing herself as she had looked years ago. I’m sure she was frightened then. If Miss Rayner saw that youthful, smiling face she’d know the truth at once. But she couldn’t cancel the New York trip. It was too important. So she did the next best thing. She paid Spangler to destroy the picture, and he did, but not soon enough. He had a lot of customers that afternoon and he talked his head off to all of them. He told them about Cassie’s visit and showed them the picture. Miss Rayner saw it and the fat was in the fire. I can see Miss Rayner too, holding that little snapshot in her hand, suddenly recognizing it, fighting back her own panic. Then she knew the motive behind Cassie’s attentions, the talks, the drives, the apparently artless questions. And she saw her one happiness crumble into dust. She knew what would happen. They’d find her father and return him to the madhouse.”

  She must have thought quickly and with deadly accuracy the night of the church supper, Mark went on. And sanely. She wasn’t mad then. Not yet. She made a cool and calculating plan to save the one thing she loved. There was no doubt now that she had pushed Nick’s arm and retrieved the sixth arrow in the confusion that followed. Or that she had invited Cassie to walk down by the dark well, calmly confessing her identity, perhaps baiting Cassie with a promise to turn her father over to the proper authorities. Then she had killed her and wounded herself, and gone back to the Sunday school to wait.

  Her persistent use of full names instead of diminutives, Mark had put down to an old lady’s formality. But, he said, he began to wonder after he read the Delaney case history. Delaney’s daughter’s name was Winifred. Then he decided it was a trivial point, and dropped it. He knew now why Winifred Delaney avoided nicknames. She couldn’t trust herself to say Joey.

  Another suspicion had come when Joey found the scraps in the incinerator. One of them still smelled faintly of violet toilet water and showed traces of sugar. He remembered how Miss Rayner had wiped her hands on a scrap of cloth the day he untied her horse. Still, he had argued, she might have found it. That fitted in with her passion for thrift. But now he knew it was the challenge of a megalomaniac. She had kept one piece of cloth after she had destroyed the clothes that were a daily, bitter reminder of Cassie’s success and one little girl’s happiness. That was when the madness began. That was when she planned complete destruction, beginning with Cassie’s dog.

  Old man Sutton, Mark said, had partly guessed the answer. He may have seen Miss Rayner in the halls the night of Cassie’s murder. That was the night he went wandering. He was so close to the end of his own life that he could feel the presence of death in any disguise. He must have seen its reflection in Miss Rayner’s eyes. And his love and pity for Nick had made him sensitive to any danger that threatened a child.

  “But still I wasn’t sure,” Mark went on. “Not even when I found an old photograph in her trunk. A baby picture, herself of course, a little girl with her hair combed like a boy’s. I was suspicious, but not sure. She took me in completely. Her manner was sound, her conversation normal and in character. She had me fooled. I thought it was going to be—” He stopped. He didn’t want Beacham to know his pet villains had been himself, Franny Peck, and the Reverend Mr. Walters. “I thought it was going to be George,” he said. He would fix that up with George when he fixed things up for Mabel. Solid silver, Mabel said.

  It was nearly midnight when they drove back to the Mountain House, leaving Bittner with a chicken carcass. Amos had gone ahead with the news, but the whole story had to be repeated. Once more gifts were borne across the grass to the Beacham cottage, and this time they stayed there.

  “I searched her room after you left,” Beulah said. “It was torn to pieces. I found a passport under that picture in the lid of her trunk. Her real name and her age. She was only forty-seven. Only a few years older than Mary Cassidy, and she looked like her grandmother. I didn’t know what you knew, but that told me enough.”

  The next morning Mark and Beulah left the Mountain House and drove down to the bus terminal in Bear River. Follies number three and four were lined up. They boarded number three. They took a seat, looked at each other with a wild surmise, and changed to number four. That child had been there again.

  Turn the page for a SNEAK PREVIEW of

  A Mark East Mystery

  Death of a Doll

  CHAPTER ONE

  ANGELINE Small stepped out of the elevator at five o’clock and nodded to Kitty Brice behind the switchboard.

  “Cold!” she said with a bright grimace. “Have they lighted the fire in the lounge?”

  “Yes, Miss Small.”

  “Good,” Miss Small said. But she walked briskly across the square lobby and checked for herself. There was only one girl in the lounge, a night worker in a Western Union office who went off to her job when the other girls came home. Miss Small found this routine confusing. When she went to her own bed at midnight, after coffee and gossip with Monny, she wanted to know that all of her seventy girls were safe and sound in their seventy good, though narrow, cots, sleeping correctly and dreamlessly because they were properly nourished and had no ugly little troubles that they hadn’t confessed.

  Miss Small switched on more lights, approved the fire and the bowls of fresh chrysanthemums, and spoke to the girl who was huddled in a deep chair with her eyes closed.

  “Good evening, Lillian. Or should it be good morning?”

  The girl looked up with a long, insolent stare and closed her eyes again.

  Time for a little heart-to-heart talk with this one, Miss Small decided. Mustn’t have sulks and surliness, such a bad example for the others. Perhaps a tiny note in her mailbox, an invitation to a nice cup of tea in my room. These poor, love-starved babies, I must do all I can.

  “Isn’t that a new coat, dear?” she asked.

  The girl got up and brushed by the outstretched hand. “Excuse me,” she said. “I forgot something.”

  Miss Small watched her cross the lobby with an arrogant stride and enter the elevator. I’ll win her over, she promised herself, but I won’t say anything to Monny. Poor Monny. She worries so when she knows I’ve been hurt. . . . She looked at the wrist watch Monny had given her the Christmas before and admired the winking diamonds. Five after five. Monny would be winding up her conference with Mrs. Fister and the meals would be better for about three days. Then they’d have coffee jelly again. I do wish she’d let me talk to Mrs. Fister, she fretted. I know how to handle people.

  She returned to the lobby and entered the railed enclosure that was the office. A broad, flat desk faced the street entrance and behind it was the switchboard. A panel of push bells covered the wall behind the board. The bells rang in the rooms at seven in the morning and six in the evening. That was when the dining room opened. They also rang to announce visitors, phone calls, and emergencies. In the five years of its existence Hope House, a Home for Girls, had met and vanquished one emergency—a fire in a wastebasket. At right angles to the desk stood an orderly hive of glass-covered mailboxes, too often empty.

  Miss Small glanced at her own box and spoke reprovingly.

  “Kitty!”

  Kitty gathered herself together and rose in sections. She was
a tall, thin girl with poor skin and lips that were faintly blue.

  “There’s something in my box, Kitty, and you didn’t give it to me.”

  “Headache,” Kitty murmured. “I’m sorry, Miss Small, but you went by so fast before, and it’s only a note Miss Brady put in.”

  “Miss Brady? Hand it to me at once, please.” Miss Small tried to keep the pleasure out of her voice. Darling olu Monny, she told herself, she’s thought of something nice for us to do later on. Maybe the theater, or a really good movie, or a little supper at that new French place. She opened the envelope carelessly under Kitty’s curious gaze.

  ANGEL [Monny wrote], Fister was frightful, wept all over the place and I’m exhausted. But we’ve got to keep the old fool happy, so I’m taking her out to tea because—this is what I tell her—because she needs to get out more, and what would we do without her! After that I’ve got to see Marshall-Gill about the party, she phoned. Angel, you’ll have to take over the desk for me until Plummer goes on at eight. There’s a new girl coming in, Ruth Miller, I’m afraid I forgot to tell you. Forgive? She’s to go in with April Hooper. Explain to her about April, will you? That’s something else I forgot, but you’ll do it so much better than I would! I’ll come to your room at the usual. Yours, M.

  Miss Small tucked the note in her blouse and sat at the desk, smiling at the daily report that was fastened to the blotter. Monica Brady’s sprawling hand had okayed a suspicion of mice on the second floor, uncovered a flaw in the addition of a plumber’s bill, and questioned room 304’s explanation of why she had stayed out all night. Under 304’s explanation, which was a new one, she found the new girl’s registration card. Ruth Miller, age twenty-nine, saleswoman at Blackman’s, no family or known relatives. Then came the confidential information in the staff code. Middle class, some refinement, shy, not a mixer, underweight, poor vision and teeth. Probably tonsils. Recommended by M. Smith and M. Smith.

  Miss Small frowned. That meant three girls from Blackman’s. It wasn’t wise to have more than two from the same place. Two could be friends, three could be troublesome.

  The front door swung open, admitting a raw, damp wind and a chattering pair who called “Good evening, Miss Small,” as they hurried to the elevator. The evening had begun.

  From the rear of the lobby a clatter of china and silver began in a low key and steadily rose, the silent switchboard came to life with a series of staccato buzzes, and the front door opened and shut at frequent intervals. In a short time the institutional smell of large-scale cooking and thick, damp clothing had routed the fragrance of burning logs and chrysanthemums. The Hope House girls had lived through another day and were coming home.

  At five o’clock Mrs. Nicholas Sutton approached her favorite clerk in Blackman’s toilet-goods department on the main floor. The clerk was Ruth Miller. Young Mrs. Sutton, snug and warm in her new birthday sables, slid a shopping list across the counter and made an honest apology.

  “I ought to be shot for coming in so late,” she said. “You’ve got all your adding up to do.”

  Ruth Miller took the list and smiled. In the year she had worked at Blackman’s Mrs. Sutton was the only woman customer who had regarded the counter between them as a bridge, not a barrier. In consequence, she gave Mrs. Sutton the same devotion she had once given a star on top of a Christmas tree; they were both remote yet intimate; untouchable but hers.

  She read the list rapidly, frowning because she needed glasses and also because she couldn’t decide whether or not to tell Mrs. Sutton about her wonderful luck.

  They use too much soap at your house,” she scolded gently. “You had three dozen two weeks ago. I expect it’s the servants, they’re all alike, you’ve got to be firm, Mrs. Sutton.”

  “I know, I know.” Mrs. Sutton slumped into momentary dejection and showed every year of her age, which was twenty. “But have you ever tried being firm with a sixty-year-old woman who wakes you up every morning with a cup of tea because she once kept house for a duke? Hell’s bells. Well, charge and send, and I’ll put them all on the dole.” She smiled at the plain, pleasant girl and wondered for the third or fourth time why she didn’t take her away from that counter and put her in the Sutton nursery. She’d be wonderful with baby. “How’ve you been, Miss Miller? And why aren’t you wearing your glasses? That’s crazy, you know.”

  “They’re broken,” Ruth Miller said. “But I’m getting new ones.”

  “I should certainly hope so! Crazy to put off things like that. But otherwise you look very chipper.”

  Ruth Miller’s pale cheeks flushed. “I’m just fine,” she said. She’d tell Mrs. Sutton why she was fine, too. Some people might think it was silly, but Mrs. Sutton would understand. Mrs. Sutton always surprised you that way. All the money in the world herself but she understood about not having any. “I’ve got a new place to live,” she said breathlessly, and her calm, plain face was almost pretty. “No more subways and furnished rooms with not enough heat and eating any which way! And only six blocks from here, a lovely place, you can’t imagine! It’s a kind of club, a hotel for girls, with breakfast and dinner, and they even have a room in the basement where you can do your own laundry. It’s lovely, and so cheap, and all the hot water you want. I think that’s what got me. No hot water is awful.”

  “No hot water is the devil,” Mrs. Sutton agreed. “Are you sure the place is respectable?”

  “There’s a church group behind it.”

  “Yah!” Mrs. Sutton jeered. “They’re after your soul, you poor thing. Don’t give them an inch. How’d you ever find it?”

  “Two girls in our stockroom live there, I knew they made less than I do, but they always looked better somehow. You know—nice coats and gloves, and permanents, and all that. So I asked them how they managed and they told me. And then I went over there and talked to the Head, a Miss Monica Brady, and she said she could give me a room with another girl. Eight dollars a week, can you imagine, with the food arid all those privileges! I move in tonight and—” She stopped because Mrs. Sutton was staring straight ahead and her eyes were as wide as a child’s. She turned her own head to investigate, and her heart gave a sickening lurch. On the rear wall, above the elevators, a small red light blinked steadily and evenly. One-two-three, one-two; one-two-three, one-two. The light was little more than a crimson blur, but she could read its silent message too well.

  “I know what that’s for,” Mrs. Sutton said softly. “Old man Blackman is a friend of my father’s. But what’s the dope? I mean what does the blinkety-blink say?”

  Ruth Miller looked down at her hands and saw that they were trembling. She tried to fill in the sales slip, but it was useless. I’m a fool, she told herself; I’ve got to stop acting like this. She didn’t look up when she answered. “One-two-three, one-two means the main aisle, hosiery. . . . It’s a woman.”

  “The idiot,” Mrs. Sutton observed cheerfully. “Pulling a thing like that when the store’s almost empty. She deserves to be caught. Idiot, she must be crazy. . . . Hey, maybe it’s not a professional, maybe it’s a kleptomaniac. For Heaven’s sake, maybe it’s somebody I know! I’m going over!”

  Ruth Miller’s hands gripped the edge of the counter. “No,” she said. “No. Don’t do it, don’t go. It’s not fair, it’s awful; don’t go, Mrs. Sutton, please.”

  Mrs. Sutton gave her a quick, surprised look. “Okay,” she said carelessly. “You’re a nice girl, Miss Miller, and I’m a no-account lug. Well, so long. We’re going down to Pinehurst tomorrow, be gone until after Thanksgiving. See you when I get back.” She turned up the collar of her sable coat. “Be good,” she smiled.

  Ruth Miller watched the slim, straight figure as it walked without hesitation to the side-street exit. Mrs. Sutton was avoiding the main aisle where a high voice was raised in tearful expostulation.

  It was then five-fifteen. In another fifteen minutes she would begin a new life. She filled Mrs. Sutton’s order and sent it down the chute, and tallied her sales-book. When th
at was done, there were only five minutes left.

  Down in the toilet-goods stockroom Moke and Poke, self-styled because they were both named Mary Smith, managed between them to spill a few drops of “Chinese Lily” perfume. They apologized profusely to each other for such carelessness and removed the evidence with fingers that flew swiftly and accurately to ear lobes and neck hollows. It was a crying shame, they said. Five dollars an ounce and ten drops gone. The buyer would have a fit if she knew, and they wouldn’t blame her. A little old ten-drop fit. “Chinese Lily.” Funny how “Chinese Lily” was the one to spill when “English Rose,” twelve dollars an ounce, was standing right next to it. They exchanged long looks and rubbed their elbows in the remains.

  “By the way,” Moke said, “do you happen to remember by any chance where we happen to be going tonight?”

  Poke furrowed her brow. “Are we going anywhere?”

  This was repartee of a high and secret order. They leaned against the stock table and shook with silent laughter. They pushed each other about like puppies. They had spoken volumes and said nothing. They were going to dinner with two boys from haberdashery. In Chinatown.

  Moke wiped her face with a scented palm. “No kidding, Poke, we did forget something. That Miss Miller’s moving in tonight, and we didn’t tell her yet that we can’t walk home with her.”

  “Should we have told her?”

  “Sure. She may be counting on us. First night and all. And the poor old thing don’t know anybody there but us. . . . Whoal Too late now.”

  Out in the corridor the closing bell clanged. Upstairs the closing bell was a carillon that dropped sweet notes from vaulted ceiling to marble floor and echoed chastely in crystal chandeliers. But down in the basement it was a gong that screamed against concrete and steel, renewed its strength, and screamed again. Moke and Poke were inured.