Hue and Cry

by Thomas B. Dewey

  Mrs. Fogarty lived on a side street a few blocks from the hotel. It took us about six minutes to walk over there. We got there around three-thirty. It was a wide, rambling house, built of white stone, probably a hundred years old, with a porch running all the way across the front and green shutters at the windows. We went around to the back. Mrs. Fogarty was in the kitchen. We went up on the back porch, just walked in through the screen door. The kitchen door was open, and Singer tapped on the wall.

  Mrs. Fogarty was one of the sweetest little old ladies in the world. She’d brought Bill up from a baby single-handed, Mr. Fogarty having died a few months after Bill was born. People said he’d been a great guy. A doctor. Mrs. Fogarty had been his nurse and general assistant before they were married. She was older than Mr. Fogarty by several years, and Bill had been born late in her life. She was well along in her sixties now and looked frail. But she was always cheerful, always comforting somebody in trouble.

  When Singer tapped on the wall she turned around to see who it was, and her face lighted up and she smiled.

  “Well, Singer, and Joe,” she said. “Come right in. Excuse me if I just go on with this baking. I’m making a batch of cookies. You know Bill. I told him I’d send him a batch the day after he left. When he was home, y’know, there was so much to talk about I just didn’t get around to baking, except from time to time, a pie, or a cake…

  Singer was smiling benevolently.

  “Bill will be happy to get these, I’ll bet,” he said. “What time did he leave last night?”

  “Oh, let me see,” said Mrs. Fogarty. “He had to get over to Montpelier to catch the train at eleven-thirty. I guess he left here about ten-forty-five. He was driving, you know. He’d borrowed his cousin Jerry’s car in Montpelier and he was going to drive back and leave it and then get the train.”

  “Here,” she said, holding out a pan. “You boys always liked my cookies. These are just fresh out of the oven. They’re Bill’s favorites.”

  I looked at the cookies. They were small, chocolate cookies filled with bits of nuts. I looked at Singer. He was still smiling.

  “Well, thank you ever so much, Mrs. Fogarty,” he said. “I hate to rob Bill like this, but it’s a cruel world. Every man for himself.”

  Singer took two or three cookies and Mrs. Fogarty handed them to me. I followed Singer’s lead. I ate one. They were certainly good cookies.

  Mrs. Fogarty had brought a fresh batch out of the oven. She lifted them off of the cookie sheet and put them on a paper. She washed her hands at the kitchen sink and took off her apron.

  “Well,” she said, “that’s all for now. I won’t have to look at those in the oven for fifteen minutes. Won’t you come in the parlor and sit down?”

  We followed her into the parlor.

  Singer sat down in the old Boston rocker. Mrs. Fogarty and I sat on the sofa near the front windows.

  “I suppose,” Singer said, “you heard about the sad death of Miss Mason.”

  Mrs. Fogarty made a wry face.

  “Well, yes, Singer, I did. It just took my breath away for a minute. Why would anyone take it into his head to do that to such a lovely girl?”

  “It’s a shame,” Singer said. “I understand she’d only lived at the hotel a few days—less than two weeks.”

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Fogarty. “She seemed perfectly happy here up until ten or twelve days ago. She was a good roomer, so neat and clean all the time, and no trouble at all. I was glad to have someone in the house after Bill left and all. Kept me company, even though I didn’t really see much of her.”

  “I don’t suppose she had any reason for leaving here,” Singer said. “Probably just wanted a little change.”

  “She didn’t give me any reason,” Mrs. Fogarty said. “It was just after Bill came home—the day after that party some of the young folks gave Bill, the surprise party.”

  “Oh?” Singer said.

  “She just came in after school and said she was moving to the hotel. I asked her if there was anything wrong and she said, no, nothing at all. She’d just decided that she’d better go over there. She said maybe she’d be out late a few nights and she didn’t want to disturb me. I told her it wouldn’t disturb me any if she stayed out late, but she said she was afraid it might. She said she’d been very happy here. She was real sweet. I was sorry to see her go.”

  “There wasn’t anything at all that might have made her decide to leave?” Singer said.

  Mrs. Fogarty looked at Singer for a while and finally she said, “There was only one thing.”

  “Yes?” said Singer.

  “She had a quarrel with Bill. Oh, it wasn’t much, I guess. She went around with Bill for a while, you know, before he went into the army.”

  “Yes,” said Singer, “I remember.”

  “Well, about a week after Bill had been home on this furlough, it must have been the night before the party, they had a talk. It was late at night. I’d gone to bed. Bill was sitting up, reading, and I heard Miss Mason come in. I was very sleepy and I must have dozed off. The next thing I knew, I was awake and I could hear Bill and Marian talking—pretty loud. I tried not to listen, but I couldn’t help hearing some of it.”

  She stopped. Singer was watching her, smiling all the time, not urging, not sitting on the edge of his seat, but listening. He nodded at Mrs. Fogarty.

  “Yes?” he said. “Do you remember what they were saying?”

  “Well—” Mrs. Fogarty seemed to be trying hard to remember. “Of course, I don’t know what it was all about, but I heard Bill say, ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you,’ and Marian said, ‘I will do it, Bill, whether you think I ought to or not.’ Then Bill asked, ‘But what proof do you have?’ and Marian said, ‘I won’t need proof.’”

  Mrs. Fogarty stopped again.

  “You don’t know what they were talking about?” said Singer.

  “No,” said Mrs. Fogarty.

  “Did they stop talking after that?”

  “Well, they talked some more, but I couldn’t make anything out of it. Bill said, ‘You’ll never make it stick, Marian,’ and she said, ‘Yes, I will. You’ve been home a week, haven’t you? That’s long enough.’ And about that time I fell asleep again.”

  “Did they seem to be really quarreling?” asked Singer.

  “Well—yes, they did,” said Mrs. Fogarty. “It bothered me for a while. I didn’t like to have Bill upset like that when he was home for a rest—these are such trying times for everybody—but he did sound upset. But the next day he didn’t mention it and I didn’t bring it up. Far as I know, he didn’t see Marian after that, except when she came in or went out. Then a few days later she came to me and said she was going to move. I do hope it wasn’t anything Bill said to her that made her want to go. I’ve never had anything against Marian.”

  “Of course not,” Singer said. “I understand you sent her some cookies after she went to the hotel.”

  “Matter of fact, I did,” Mrs. Fogarty said.

  “Well, I guess we’d better be running along,” Singer said. “Those are awfully good cookies, Mrs. Fogarty, Bill’s going to like those.”

  We got up.

  “That reminds me,” she said. “I’d better look at the ones that are in the oven now. It was nice of you boys to drop in. I hope you’ll come again. I’m so used to having boys around, it seems strange, with Bill gone…

  “We’ll drop in again,” said Singer. “You take care of yourself now.”

  “Oh, yes, I haven’t much else to do,” Mrs. Fogarty said and smiled.

  We left by the front door. Mrs. Fogarty stood for a few seconds looking after us before she closed the door to go back into the house.

  “Look, Singer,” I said, when we were out on the sidewalk again, “I’m getting scared.”

  “Why?”

  “Well—seems to me we’re finding things out that we’d just as well not know. Seems to me all the people we think of as the nicest people in town are turning out w
rong.”

  “That’s a hasty opinion,” Singer said. “If life is a series of unpleasant truths, it is also a series of compensations for them.”

  “You don’t say,” I said.

  “Never be afraid of the truth, Joe.”

  “Who’s afraid?” I said. “I just want to have a little faith left.”

  Singer sighed and didn’t say anything more and in a little while I began to feel foolish.

  “Okay,” I said. “So Marian Mason and Bill Fogarty had a fight. What about?”

  “That we will have to ferret out,” said Singer. “It would occur to Mrs. Fogarty’s naive nature to play it down. Maternal solicitude, the protective instinct. I think it must have been a more strenuous quarrel than she made out.”

  “How do you ferret it out? One party’s dead and the other is a hundred miles away in camp.”

  “I’m going to ask Bill Fogarty.”

  “You going up to Camp Custer?”

  “No, Joe. I’m going to send Bill a telegram.”

  “That’s fine,” I said. “He’ll send the whole story right back. He’s got nothing else to do.”

  “We’ll see, Joe. We’ll see.”

  We were headed back now toward the hotel. Life in Preston had swung to normal after the first buzz of excitement. Groups of people were gathered here and there, and probably they were talking about the murder, but they would have been gathered in the same way any other time, talking about something else. There was no crowd around the hotel.

  As we passed the bank we saw Doc Blane come running down the hotel steps and start up the street in our direction. He stopped when he saw Singer.

  “I’m on my way to Fisk’s funeral parlor,” he said. “If you want to witness that autopsy—”

  “I’ll be right along,” Singer said.

  Doc looked at me. “But I’m afraid Joe here—” he said.

  “Don’t apologize, Doc,” I said. “I once saw an autopsy. That’s once too often.”

  “What bothered you, Joe?” asked Doc.

  “The smell,” I said. “I didn’t mind anything else. Just the smell.”

  Doc laughed.

  “I’ve got to get along, Singer,” he said.

  “Joe,” Singer said, “you send a telegram to Bill Fogarty. Inform him of the death of Marian Mason and ask him why they quarreled.”

  “That all?” I said.

  “That’s all.”

  “Okay.”

  He hurried off to catch up with Doc Blane.

  I went down to the D. T. & I. station to send the wire. It read:

  Marian Mason murdered last night. What did you quarrel with her about when you were home? Please reply collect. Singer Batts

  I asked old Ezra Cummings, the station agent, to call me at the hotel when he got a reply, and he said he would.

  I went back to the hotel and into the sitting room and started in again on the bourbon.

  Forty-five minutes later Singer came in. I was itching to know what he had found out, but I was damned if I’d ask. Finally he opened up.

  “We know more now, Joe,” he said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Marian Mason died of strychnine poisoning around twelve o’clock last night.”

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “Yes, Joe.”

  “Then the knife didn’t kill her?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t say,” I said.

  “Something else,” Singer said.

  “What?”

  “At the time of her death, Marian Mason was pregnant.”

  The telephone rang. It was Ezra Cummings. “Got a reply to that wire, Joe,” he told me.

  “Shoot,” I said.

  I wrote it down as he read it to me:

  Sorry about Marian. As to why we quarreled, ask Curly Evans.

  CHAPTER 7

  “Curly Evans seems to be the big mind in this business,” I said.

  Singer didn’t hear me. He was gazing at the door. You could practically hear the wheels in his head whirling around, faster and faster. Suddenly he stuck out his jaw—that always meant he’d clicked on an idea—and made for the door.

  “Hey,” I said, “let’s have another shot before we go out.”

  “No time now, Joe.”

  So I followed him right away.

  I followed him outside and through the kitchen to the back of the hotel into the alley, where the hotel and the stores in that section dumped their trash into big packing cases. The cases were hauled away every two or three days. They were about half full now, which meant they would be hauled away some time tomorrow—maybe.

  Singer picked up a long stick and began to poke around in the cases. I watched him. He did it for quite a while. Every now and then he would reach into the rubbish and pull something out. But he always threw it back again and went on poking. Finally he quit and dropped the stick.

  “Today’s hotel rubbish been dumped?” he asked me.

  “Yeah,” I said. “About noon. It’s four o’clock now. What are we looking for?”

  “You work on it for a while, Joe,” he said and went on down the alley to the back of the harness shop next door. There was a big box of rubbish there, too, half full, and a smaller one up on the edge of the big box, I started to let this one spill out. Singer grabbed my arm.

  “Don’t be in a hurry, Joe,” he said. “Ease it down. Let the trash trickle out slowly.”

  So I did that, and Singer got down close to the edge of the big box and watched the trash that rolled into the box: paper, old razor blades, a pair of discarded socks, a pocket mystery book, all kinds of odds and ends.

  Every once in a while Singer would stop me and grab something that had started to roll out. But everything he picked up he threw back in.

  “What the hell?” I said. “Even if you find something, you don’t know where it came from.”

  He didn’t answer that one at all.

  My arms were getting pretty tired by this time and I guess I hurried it up too much. The next thing I knew, Singer was hanging over the edge of the packing case, about to split his pants, paddling around in the rubbish, trying to keep up with me. The little box was empty. I dropped it on the ground and started to laugh. Singer pushed himself up out of the case, straightened his coat, and brushed off his pants. His hands were empty. He looked very hurt.

  “Well?” I said.

  “Nothing,” he said, and turned away.

  The next place was Benson’s Laundry. Benson’s rubbish box wasn’t in the alley. It was down by the side door between the laundry and the harness shop. They only had one small box and there wasn’t much in it. Singer bent over and rummaged around in the trash.

  “Now look,” I said. “If you’re going to go prowling around in other people’s rubbish, you can count me out—”

  But Singer said, “Ahh!” and came up out of the trash box with something wrapped in newspaper.

  “You found it?” I said.

  “I think so,” he said.

  He laid the package on the ground and opened it. There were two drinking glasses.

  “That’s fine,” Singer whispered. “Neither one is broken.”

  He smelled them, handling them carefully. Then he shook his head and wrapped them up in the newspaper. He put them under his arm and went back to the alley. When he got to the building where Doc Blane’s office was, he turned down beside it and went to the street. We went into the Doc’s office.

  Doc looked at us and made a face.

  “The two detectives,” he said. “What is it this time?”

  Singer took the glasses out of the paper and handed them to the Doc.

  “Would you be able to tell whether either or both of these showed any traces of strychnine?” Singer asked.

  Doc Blane jumped a little. “Yes,” he said, “I could.”

  “Do you have time?” Singer asked.

  “I guess so.”

  He took the glasses and smelled them, just as Singer had done back in
the alley.

  “Smells like it,” he said, “but I’d better make sure. Just a few minutes.”

  He went inside and we waited.

  He was back in about five minutes with the glasses.

  “Where did you find these, Singer?” he asked.

  “Out in the alley,” said Singer.

  “They ought to be turned over to the District Attorney. They probably carry fingerprints.”

  “By all means,” Singer said. “I’ll do that, of course. Did you find any strychnine?”

  Slowly the Doc nodded. “Yes, I did.”

  “In both?”

  “No. Only one.”

  “Which one?”

  “That one. I stuck a piece of tape on it.”

  “I see,” said Singer.

  We got up. The Doc followed us to the door. He was very serious.

  “Singer,” he said, “do you think you know who killed Miss Mason?”

  Singer laughed. “No, Doctor, I don’t,” he said. “Not yet.”

  The Doc thought it over. Then he shrugged.

  “You’d better turn those glasses over to the District Attorney,” he said.

  “Certainly,” Singer said.

  “When you get through with them,” said the Doc, and went back into his office.

  “Back to the hotel?” I said to Singer.

  “Not yet, Joe,” he said.

  “You going to turn those glasses over to Weaver?”

  “Yes, sooner or later.”

  I looked at Singer. “What next?”

  “Where’s your car, Joe?”

  “Back of the bank.”

  “You have gasoline?”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “Could we drive, say, five miles?”

  “All right. We’ll take a chance. Where are we going?”

  “We’re going down to the tourist camp to see Curly Evans.”

  “We can’t wait till he gets back to the hotel?”

  “We can’t wait, Joe.”

  “All right.”

  We went to the car and I got it started.

  * * * *

  The tourist camp was not much more than a glorified swimming hole, a mile north of town. Nobody had ever been known to camp there. But it made a nice little recreation spot. They’d dammed up the creek and, while it wasn’t any swank resort, you could swim in it. And they’d built a bathhouse, with showers, where people could put on their bathing suits. Every year the pipes that fed the showers froze and some of them burst. They also had to plug up the holes the boys drilled between their side of the bathhouse and the girls’ side. They paid Curly Evans a dollar an hour to take care of these things every spring. He was pretty late this year, but we’d had a cold spring and nobody had wanted to go swimming yet.