Four Lost Ladies (The Hildegarde Withers Mysteries)

by Stuart Palmer

  When the Bascom folder arrived he declared himself incommunicado for a couple of hours, plowing methodically through this last memorial to the little librarian page by page and paragraph by paragraph, coming up at last against a stone wall.

  He wasn’t the only one. Far uptown in an ornate suite on the nineteenth floor of the Hotel Grandee two innocents abroad were brunching on a double order of eggs Benedict, neither showing much appetite. It was really a council of war, a meeting of the joint chiefs of staff to review a bewildering series of defeats.

  “I must have done something wrong,” the schoolteacher was saying. “But I can’t imagine what. Certainly it isn’t my charms, or lack of them. Because I have a very clear idea of the type of man we’re after and how he must operate. A Bluebeard, eloping with women for what money they have and then disposing of them after he gets his hands on it, isn’t interested in pulchritude. As Mrs. Josie Goggins, the merry widow from La Porte, Indiana, I should be the perfect target for his attentions. But he doesn’t seem to want to play.”

  Jeeps was sympathetic. “It’s certainly all over the hotel by now, about who you are—I mean who you’re supposed to be. Because I showed Tad the newspaper clipping.”

  “Tad?”

  “Yes, you can’t expect me to call anybody Thaddeus Belanger III. You know, he’s the tall one in the crew haircut, with the cute snub nose.”

  “Oh, the bellboy!”

  Jeeps flushed. “Well, he isn’t going to remain a bellboy all his life. Someday he’s going to be manager of this hotel.”

  “Indeed! So that’s where you were last evening.”

  “We only went to the Roxy, and then had some Chinese spareribs and stuff. I pumped him shamelessly about the hotel. But he doesn’t remember my aunt staying here at all. The only one of the four missing women he does remember is Brinker, the nurse. Because of the poodle, you know. It was always getting loose and jumping on people in the lobby, and the management finally asked her to get rid of it or move.”

  Miss Withers was getting interested. “Did you think to ask him if he happened to remember seeing her with anybody, I mean any of the male guests?”

  “I did, and he didn’t. But he says she used to get all dressed up to the teeth and then go out in the evening with the dog on a leash and not come back until late.”

  “Poor Ethel Brinker isn’t the first woman who’s discovered that going around in public with a friendly dog is a quick way of widening one’s acquaintance. I have an idea that she didn’t have to spend many of those evenings alone.” Miss Withers shook her head. “We face a very clever and cautious antagonist, child. Mr. Nemo seems to have covered his tracks well. I shouldn’t be surprised if he had managed to meet his dates somewhere outside the hotel on some pretext or other.”

  “Look,” Jeeps cried suddenly. “Suppose the reason he hasn’t nibbled at the bait is that he’s finally moved his base of operations?”

  “Then we’re sunk. We can’t shop around,” the schoolteacher pointed out. “There are too many other big hotels in this town, and my resources are dwindling rapidly. I really can’t dig any deeper into my lifetime savings.”

  The girl nodded. “Or do you suppose that we were just unlucky enough to pick a time when Mr. Nemo was away somewhere disposing of his latest victim? Maybe he has a yacht and just dumps them overboard.”

  Miss Withers expressed doubts as to whether, even in the last stages of blind infatuation, a woman could be talked into taking a honeymoon cruise on Long Island Sound in January. “But of course he might be out of town. If we only had access to the records downstairs, and could find out what male guest checks in and out.”

  Both women sat in silence for a moment. “And I was so hopeful in the beginning,” said the schoolteacher. “I mean, when I stumbled into Peter Temple’s arms. He was just the type I had in mind: always polite to women and yet with just the faintest suggestion of brutality in his manner. But since I let him give me the slip in the cocktail lounge that evening I’ve seen him around the hotel several times and I have a feeling he’s avoiding me.”

  “Then there was your artist,” Jeeps said. “And the Russian—”

  “Count Stroganyeff?” Miss Withers sighed, remembering all the trouble she’d taken to be caught with that massive Slav in the revolving door. She had very nearly ruined half of a perfectly good pair of opera pumps, and all she’d had for her pains was the thrill of having had her hand kissed for the first and no doubt the last time in her life. The man had been very gallant for ten minutes or so—and it had all climaxed with his giving her his card and telling her to get in touch with him if she felt like buying a pedigreed Borzoi. He could also get her a special price on Black Sea caviar in large lots. Another false alarm—

  “Anyway,” Jeeps said, “I just remembered that Aunt Alice didn’t care for Russians White or red, because they always take you to places where you have to eat borscht and she was allergic to beets. She wouldn’t have ever got involved with him.”

  “Perhaps not. Though they say love laughs at locksmiths and perhaps at allergies too. There were a few other gentlemen with whom I managed to scrape up an acquaintance, but most of them only wanted to show me pictures of their wives and children back home. Like the man who sat himself uninvited at my table the night I splurged and had supper in the Emerald Room, and it turned out that he didn’t belong in the hotel at all but had only been dragged in on somebody’s silver-wedding anniversary party.”

  “Maybe Mr. Nemo doesn’t work the bars,” Jeeps suggested. “He might make his pickups in the lobby or up in the mezzanine.”

  “I thought of that. No stone has been left unturned. I’ve loitered up there for hours, watching people go in and out of the Cathedral de Beauté and the smart little shops, pretending to write letters. But the only person who ever spoke to me was a nervous young woman who wanted me to mind her little boy while she telephoned, I think to her bookmaker.”

  “It’s plumb depressing, that’s what it is.” Jeeps finished the coffee.

  “The trouble is,” Miss Withers continued, “that most of the middle-aged men in this hotel already seem to have women firmly attached. Of course there’s the stocky man in dark spectacles. I keep running into him now and then, and he always stares in an interested sort of way. I stopped at the newsstand yesterday to buy a paper and he was browsing through some agricultural magazine. I took the bull by the horns—or is it the tail?—and ventured a friendly good afternoon at him, but he only nodded and then hurried away as if he thought I had bubonic plague.”

  “Tough luck,” said Jeeps, with the easy sympathy of a girl who is confident that no man will ever willingly hurry away from her. She was lying now on the carpet and pedaling an imaginary bicycle upside down. “It’s all in the way you handle men,” she said. “Now just take Tad. I’ve got him right where I want him. You’ll see—he’s coming up when he goes on duty around noon.”

  Miss Withers sat up straight. “Coming here? Then shouldn’t you get out of those flaming pajamas and put on your maid’s uniform?”

  “Nope. You see, last night when he was telling me all about how he really wasn’t a bellboy but just getting experience so he could work up to manager someday, I sort of let down my hair and told him about me. Oh, not the really me. But I let him in on the secret that I’m not your maid. I’m just a struggling young radio actress who was hired by the sponsors of the Miss Whosit program to play the part for a while. It’s supposed to be a harmless conspiracy to get you married off. I’m to get a bonus and a contract if I’m successful, and I told Tad maybe he could help.”

  “But why? I don’t—”

  “I told him that they want to put the wedding on the air, so that they can announce that in addition to the house and the airplane and the chinchilla coat and all the rest of the stuff Mrs. Goggins won, they also gave her a husband. Sounds plausible, doesn’t it?”

  “Daughter of Ananias!” whispered the schoolteacher. “Yes, I suppose it’s quite as believable a
s most of what seems to happen on those radio programs. But—”

  “He swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. Tad is on our side. He’s even going to slip me a list of all the eligible males who live here in the hotel. Don’t you see, Mr. Nemo’s name is bound to be on that list? We can check ’em off one by one.” Jeeps dropped to the floor again, and kicked her legs comfortably in the air. “You’re not supposed to know what’s going on of course, so when Tad comes, maybe—”

  “I’ll make myself scarce,” the schoolteacher agreed. She suffered Jeeps to apply a bit of rouge to her face and lips, and then donned the chinchilla coat and went out. Walking down to Grand Central, she invested a ten-dollar bill in small change and then denned up with it in a telephone booth, surrounded by telephone directories for Queens and Long Island. The number of boarding-kennels listed was rather on the appalling side, but she took a deep breath and started in.

  Because somewhere on the other side of the East River there was a prisoner, a dog—no doubt small, dirty-white, with pink, runny eyes, as the Inspector had said—which represented the last link with one of the four missing women whom she was sworn to avenge. Ethel Brinker had taken the poodle out there, by request of the Grandee management, during her brief stay at the hotel. It might very well have been after she had met Mr. Nemo and fallen into his snare. Miss Withers fondly believed that even the cleverest of murderers must make a mistake sometime, somewhere. Perhaps the man had gone out there with her to help deliver the dog. Stranger things had happened.

  Two hours and more than nine dollars later the schoolteacher, worn and a little giddy from the closeness of the booth, dropped what was almost her last coin in the slot and called the number of an establishment in Babylon bearing the incredible name of Elysian Fields Doghaven. This time she got a great deal more than her dime’s worth. There was a roaring as of mighty waters in her ear, which finally resolved itself into the excited, faintly cockney accents of a man whose patience was exhausted.

  “Yes, a Miss Ethel Brinker left her tyke here to board, and it’s about time somebody did something about the bloody nuisance because I want to get it off our hands right now, and besides there’s two months board owing and I’m not running no home from home for dogs, not charity-like. When she left it here with us she said it would only be for a couple of weeks and she said she’d send money to pay the tick and tell us where to ship the blasted bloody animal—”

  “She was planning a trip, then?”

  “Right you are. She said she’d read that there was a rabies epidemic where she was going, and didn’t want to take her precious Talley-walley there until it was safe. But this time of year there’s no rabies anywhere, and the dog won’t stay any place we put it. A regular Houdini, he is.”

  “I’m very sorry,” Miss Withers said quickly. “But I didn’t know. I’m handling Ethel’s affairs for her while she’s away. I’m her—her sister.” All women are sisters, she told her conscience, and if she wasn’t handling poor Ethel Brinker’s affairs, then who was? She went on to explain that she had called only in hopes that he had heard something from the dog’s owner. “She seems to have got herself mixed up with a man. By the way, was he with her when she came to bring out the animal?”

  “No, ma’am,” said the kennelman, whose named turned out to be Harris. “She never came here. We sent the truck into town to pick the dog up, and the thick-headed boy who drove it forgot to ask for a deposit. Now there’s thirty-six dollars board bill and ten more for washing and clipping, and I want my money—”

  “I’ll certainly tell my sister, if I hear from her,” Miss Withers promised him. “And would you please write down my name and telephone number, and let me know at once if you hear anything from her or about her?” She had expected an argument at this point, and the necessity of offering a small bribe, but Mr. Harris proved surprisingly amenable.

  “Right you are. Hildegarde Withers, 32 West Seventy-Fourth, Longacre 8. … ”

  And that was that. In fishing through the ice, particularly thin ice like this, the more lines you set the better chance you have of a bite. She tacked back up Park in the teeth of a bitter north wind, taking deep breaths of the comparatively fresh air of Manhattan and feeling somehow encouraged.

  Then as she passed the Waldorf a hatless figure in a grayish-green overcoat suddenly fell into step with her. “Good afternoon,” said Jonathan. “Are you thinking?”

  “Constantly,” she answered, somewhat startled.

  “About sitting? Mrs. Goggins, the light is very good today. I will paint you something like American Gothic; you will be holding a tall highball glass and turning up your nose at the smell. I will call the picture ‘Sweet Poison for the Age’s Tooth.’”

  “That would be very nice,” Miss Withers told him. “But I have other fish to fry.”

  “Perfect! I will paint you with a fish on a platter, sniffing it!”

  “Not today,” she said kindly.

  “Then think about it, Mrs. Goggins. Remember, I like your bones.” He turned back, and the schoolteacher went on toward her hotel, somewhat subdued.

  As she came back into the Grandee lobby she gave a quick look round, but there was no sign of any of her hot prospects. Count Stroganyeff was chatting with the big dark-haired girl who ran the theater-ticket counter, and it appeared that he was about to kiss her hand or make a good try at it. But there was nobody else in sight. Miss Withers shrugged her shoulders and continued on toward the elevators. Perhaps Jeeps Davidson had had a productive afternoon.

  Jeeps had. In fact, she was still having it. As Miss Withers unlocked her door and entered the suite she had a brief glimpse of the girl and Tad Belanger III as they sprang suddenly apart. The bellboy turned slightly pink around the neck and ears as he mumbled something and took a hasty departure, but as he passed the schoolteacher she noticed that he stared at her with an added interest. Wondering how hard it will be to get me married off for the benefit of a radio program’s Roman holiday, she said to herself.

  When the door had closed behind him, Miss Withers looked sternly at Jeeps. “I happen to stand in loco parentis, young woman. Therefore I feel a certain sense of responsibility for you. I suppose he was taking a cinder out of your eye?”

  “Nope. I was kissing him. The first kiss.”

  “And he’s been here all this time? I thought the younger generation had a lower boiling point than that.”

  “This was his second visit today,” Jeeps explained. “I prevailed upon him to go downstairs and find out something for me and he did, so I kissed him. You would too. Anyway, this noon he brought me a list of the eligible bachelors who live in the hotel. It was a letdown. Most single men who stop here are transients. Among the permanent guests are Mr. Temple, and Count Stroganyeff, and two men who room together and design fabrics, and a publisher whose wife is in the Virgin Islands getting a divorce, and Mr. Forrest the public relations man—he gets free rent as part of his retainer—and a tenor at the Met—”

  “No,” decided Miss Withers. “Mr. Nemo couldn’t have a regular business or profession, or he wouldn’t have to resort to wholesale murder for money.”

  “I know. But listen. I asked Tad to go back and find out which if any of those men on the list was in the habit of checking out of the hotel and in again. So he did. None of them were—I mean was. But don’t look so downcast, it’s better than that. The man doesn’t check out, he has his suite on a monthly rate. But he’s away on an average of one week in the month, sometimes more.”

  “Who is? The suspense is terrible.”

  “This man gets a fresh flower for his buttonhole every morning when he’s here, and has it charged. But there are thirty days in most months, and this girl that Tad knows—I mean used to know—in the flower-shop says that he averages only about twenty gardenias—”

  “I think I’ll turn you over my knee—” Miss Withers began. Then she gasped. “Gardenias?”

  Jeeps nodded, like a solemn little owlet. “I was waiting for you to gues
s. Your beginner’s luck was lucky after all.”

  “No, it can’t be Peter Temple, it just can’t!”

  “Aunt Alice checked out of this hotel on October eleventh. Temple was away somewhere on the twelfth, because the girl at the ticket counter told Tad he had a pair of seats for the opening of a new musical, and didn’t pick them up!”

  Miss Withers frowned thoughtfully. “Still—oh, I admit that at one time I was sure he was our man. An ex-movie star with no visible means of support, in love with himself as all actors have to be, could very well turn into a mass-murderer. But I gave him every opportunity, and he didn’t strike at the bait.”

  “Maybe you were just a little eager. Or too intelligent?”

  “Which is your nice way of saying that I flung myself at his head, that I’m not much of an actress, and that I scared him off!” The schoolteacher had a faraway look in her eye. “You know, I remember reading somewhere that even tigers turn to being man-killers only when they are past their prime and slowing up.”

  “That’s right—that’s Temple. Now do we go down to Headquarters again?”

  “If we came to the Inspector with only vague suspicions, I think he’d send us over to Bellevue for observation. But I was about to remark that if I had ten minutes alone in a tiger’s lair I might very probably stumble on a bone or two. Do you happen to know the number of Mr. Temple’s suite?”

  “It’s 12C30. But you don’t dare! And what could you hope to find?”

  “I’ll know it when I see it,” Miss Withers pronounced. “Perhaps I’ll have better luck as a snoop than I did as a siren.”

  Success in crime, the schoolteacher felt, could result only from a meticulous regard for the details of preparation, and then from the boldest execution. My strength is as the strength of ten, because my heart is pure—or at least my intentions are good, Miss Withers was saying to herself as a little after nine-thirty that evening she got out of the elevator on the fourteenth floor and walked down one flight, with Jeeps close behind.